Category: ART

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Bric-a-Bra-C

  • 1aaPoleLager1982

    Lager by Sigmar Polke (the wired image is from German concentration camp)

    Size A – He really liked the film Double Suicide.

    Size B
    “I didn’t want to harm the man. I thought he was a very nice gentleman….
    (Saw “Capote” by Bennet Miller yesterday. )

    Size C
    Look they are growing,
    Adjustable Wall Bra by Vito Acconci.

    Size D

    Sigmar Polke

    Sigmar Polke is a brilliantly witty artist. I use the word ‘wit’ in the way it was used of English 17th-century poetry, to describe a ranging and probing intelligence that investigates everything, connecting disparate images and ideas. He can be flatly comic and slapstick. He can equally make layered and ambiguous images of great subtlety. He does not preach or hector; I have the sense that he expects his audience to participate in the rueful irony – and in the delight – with which he presents his phantasmagoria. He has constructed, arguably, the most complete language I know for describing modern reality.

    (A. S. Byatt writing for Tate Modern.)

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    Wilder Shores of Love

    Happy Birthday to Cy Twombly, Bertrand Tavernier and Paul Mazursky.

    1cy (Gagosian)

    See his paintings at Gagosian + eight sculptures

    Cy TwomblyCy Twombly sculpture Thermopylae
    Here is a background of Thermopylae.

    See more of his sculptures here. Not many are familiar with his sculptures. It is safe to say only those who have seen his sculptures at a gallery would have identified him as the sculptor for the above image.

    This is an art with a secret, which is in general not that of spreading the substance (charcoal, ink or oil) but of letting its trail behind.
    I know the island of Procida, in the Bay of Naples, where Twombly has lived. I have spent a few days in the ancient house where Graziella, Lamartine’s heroine, spent her days. There, calmly united, are the light, the sky, the earth, the accent of a rock, an arch. It is Virgil and it is a Twombly paintings: there is none, in fact, where we don’t find this void of the sky, of water, and those very light marks indicating the earth (a boat, a promontory) which float in them (apparent rari nantes): the blue of the sky, the gray of the sea, the pink of sunrise.
    From Wisdom of Art by Roland Barthes.

    “His art is tearful, sensual, pessimistic, and on the edge of bad taste” from the Guardian Jonathan Jones.

    Through his paintings trickles a current of double nostalgia – on the one hand, for the closed-off “heroic” possibilities of Modernism and, on the other, for the ancient Mediterranean world, experienced at a remove by living in modern Italy. Love (or its facsimile) among the ruins. (Robert Hughes from here)

    Wilder Shores of Love

    Photographs by Cy Twombly – an essay by Mario Cutajar

    Three studies of Temeraine – New South Wales Australia

    Cy Twombly Gallery by Renzo Piano – Italian architect (Houston, Menil Collection)

    Bertrand Tavernier Bertrand Tavernier

    In this interview of Bertrand Tavernier

    T: I like to deal with subjects that attract me. I’m interested in people fighting, trying to change things, making mistakes. But I like each film to be a challenge, [as if] it’s my first. When you do a film on adoption and you arrive in a place like Cambodia, anything can happen.

    On his film about French resistence “Safe Conduct” is here.

    “Enemies A Love Story” by Paul Mazursky
    Lena Olin was splendid and Ron Silver’s only good movie and who would have thought that Ron would lose his head after 9/11 and became a pro Iraq war talking head.

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    Senso – Alida Valli

    Alida Valli Alida Valli (May 31, 1921 – April 22, 2006)

    Above still from”The Third Man”

    This page Alida Valli from the Third Man contains images from the famous dramatic final shot of The Third Man.

    From Senso

    Italian director Luchino Visconti dishes up his usual blend of elegance and decadence in Senso. The international cast includes French film star Alida Valli as a Italian countess married to a Venetian nobleman, and English leading man Farley Granger as an Austrian military officer. The two are swept up in the Austrian empire’s evacuation of Italy in 1866. Valli and Granger fall in love, but Valli ultimately realizes that the officer is interested only in her wealth and prestige, whereupon she gives him over to a firing squad. Visconti had wanted Ingrid Bergman and Marlon Brando for his leads, but when Bergman’s husband Roberto Rossellini would not permit her to appear in the film, Brando also bowed out.(via)
    (The NYtimes made a mistake in calling Alida Valli a French film star.)

    Many beautiful stills of Alida Valli who passed away yesterday on April 22, rest in peace.

    Cyclone Google Trembling Homage to Cy Twombly by Fung Lin Hall

    This is an imaginary google tribute I created for an artist who will turn 78 years old on April 25. He is also the mystery sculptor from the quiz I posted previously.

    The answer for the quiz is postponed till April 25.

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    Dog Barking at Moon

    Name the artist who made this sculpture.

    Not by Miro. Cy Twombly
    Wait for the next post for an answer.
    This artist is more famous for his paintings
    Miro’s sculpture is here.

    Happy M-I-R-O Day!
    Thanks Google Miro google for the reminder.

    M-I-R-O phonetically means “Look” in Japanese – a command.

    Let us go you and I to look at a few things.

    Side glance Miro at Miro’s works in Monochrome. (via)

    Easy Miro quiz here.

    From Pompidou Miro Pompidou

    Elswhere;
    Gotas D’agua featured some wonderful portraits of our favorite artist. (Gotas D’ is from Lisbon).

    What about this post on Cattelan – I have pointed to this image in my previous post.

    Before we depart you can check out some new links in
    my sidebar menu – esp. three new links under fashion-kimono.

    Oof oof, bark all you want, too late for my google Miro.

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    Double Suicide

  • Double Suicide Double Suicide

    See these great images from a film directed by Masahiro Shinoda.
    This excellent film is a unique blend of theater and cinema. The elements of Japanese Bunraku theater, where actors are three-quarter life-sized puppets controlled by puppeteers dressed all in black (Kuroko), are intricately woven into the story.

    I (Harry Kreisler) saw Double Suicide twice, and your dual performance of Koharu and Osan in that movie was extraordinary. You were able to convey the bond between the two women even though they were fighting over the same man. What were the challenges of doing that dual role?

    Shima Iwashita Shinoda double suicide as Koharu

    “Koharu was a prostitute, and in that time the people wore very white make up, had very glamorous kimono, and I used a very high voice for her. With Osan, I contrasted that with the traditional blackening of the teeth for married women and shaving of the eyebrows and having a lower speaking tone in my voice. Koharu spoke much faster and Osan slower. But the director had told me that in the last scene that he wanted to give the impression it might have been the double suicide of the same woman. So that the two of them might have been the same woman. So toward the end, I tried to keep that in mind in thinking that Koharu’s suicide might have been Osan’s suicide as well. I tried to get that impression across.”
    (from here.)

    Painting Fung Ching Kelling
    Two at the Side (two paintings) by Fung Ching Kelling

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    A Nod to a Nose or Ode to a Combination Platter

    Let me introduce you to a nose of Dan Wade.

    Intro to Dan Wade

    Who is Dan Wade?

    This is what he does best

    .Kiss Dan Wade

    Dan Wade is an action gif star and his blog is here.

    Getting back to more serious matter, I saw this film made in 1993 Combination Platter supplied by my favorite local library. “Combination Platter represents the directorial debut of 23-year-old Tony Chan. Himself a Hong Kong émigré, Chan draws from his own experiences in detailing the tribulations of illegal immigrant Robert (Jeff Lau), who takes a low-paying job at a Szechuan restaurant in New York (the film was shot in the restaurant owned by Chan’s parents!” (MSM movie info page).

    Look who is holding the green card here.

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    RIP Allan Kaprow

    Allan Kaprow passed away. Allan Kaprow
    (Man with white shirt is Allan Kaprow – from here
    18 Happenings in 6 Parts – 1956)

    “Yard” by Allan Kaprow<> <> <> <> <> Kaprow vs Morris

    From An old interview “And one could say today perhaps almost for twenty years now, we’ve been in a neo-conservative state with back to all kinds of prototypical modernisms, now quoted, now so called post-modernist snide tickle-tickley cutesy stuff, all of it feeding a consumerist market, of course.”

    Lithograph of Allan K.Allan Kaprow Title: and so it goes make so most of it

    Allan Kaprow via
    no longer exist not-time hands of clock-clock without numbers (title of above lithographe)

    “While modern art concerns itself with surfaces in order to transform and transcend them, Kaprow is concerned with surfaces but not with transcendence; his surfaces don’t lead anywhere except back to themselves, as deepened experiences of themselves-as-themselves.” (from Dirt and Toothpaste, or, An Approach To the Problem of Being A Self in Modern Life — Notes on Allan Kaprow)

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    Primavera – Art Exhibition

    Primavera’ is an exhibition featuring contemporary artists from Italy, the Netherlands and the UK.

    Primavera Primavera Paul Malone

    The themes of renewal and ‘first truth’ are realised in diverse formats, from made artefacts to digital projection.

    The exhibition also draws from the history and character of the gallery, which is sited in a former flower shop and listed building.

    Here is the announcement of this exhibition – see more artists listed on this page.
    (via email from Paul Malone)

    Giorgio Tentolini has an ambitious flash site, check his Object page, then to Sirene, Exhibition 05 and Settestate from his ART page.

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    Breakfast on Pluto, Not I

    Is this green enough for St Patrick’s Day?

    <> <> <> St Patrick's Day

    Breakfast on Pluto (trailer with great soundtrack)

    Neil Jordan has a website.

    “After working with Neil Jordan in The End of the Affair, the director saw in her the perfect protagonist for Not I, and decided that the world could do with a more intimate look at Ms. Moore’s lovely mouth.” (From Modernword)
    Who has seen this 14 min. film based on Samuel Beckett? Not I.

    Happy St Patrick’s Day google St Patrick's Day

    NJ: Yeah, Butcher Boy said things about an Irish childhood that I’d never seen in fiction. It was one of those books that actually shows minute details and it was just so familiar to me. Breakfast on Pluto is quite different. This is more like a wild fantasy, really. When I read Breakfast on Pluto it seemed almost like a series of opportunities, you know? An opportunity to go on a journey that I hadn’t gone on before. (from Popmatters Interview)

    Here is a trailer for The Butcher Boy. (Sinead O’Connor as the Virgin Mary)

    An old article from the guardian on Patrick MaCabe who wrote both novels, The Butcher Boy and Breakfast on Pluto.

    Go back to this image for any other day.
    Shadow and Stripe Fung Lin Hall/><br /> (Stop before turning to more Irish green image.)</p> <li></li> <p><iframe loading=

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    Subtitles – Fear and Trembling

    Memoires of a Geisha is banned in China.
    Illegal copies of the film are already available in China, one of the main sources of imported pirate film DVDs in the UK. (BBC)

    Banned Cacti Geisha
    Cuctus ban geisha (See previous post on my obssession with these cacti. You can change them into cacti gay cowboys, if you prefer Ang Lee’s film. Brokeback Mountain is banned also in China).

    The producer and director (Spieldberg and Marshall) had missed the golden opportunity to create something fresh with Chinese actresses. They have to play themselves and this should be a mock documentary about why they have to play Japanese Geisha and it is about the Hollywood hubris. (Why insult two asian economic powers Japan and China?) Think “Topsy Turvey” by Mike Leigh or “Singing in the Rain” a musical which is also a spoof about the entertainment world.
    Tristram Shandy follows that strategy of adapting the unfilmable.

    When Steven Spieldberg had dinner with Kurosawa, Steven was delighted that they talked for 10 hours straight and it was all about film tricks and techniques. (via) Did Steven think Kurosawa wanted to talk about Shakespeare, Van Gogh or Gogol with him?
    Or when Rob Marshall said that Anthony Quinn had played Zorba the Greek in order to defend his position in hiring Chinese mega stars instead of Japanese, well sorry Rob, you are not Michael Cacoyannis.
    (Decades ago in Seattle I saw Iphigenia and the tear duct got loose and shed tears of Olympian proportion from beginning to end. It could be the result of depression from living under wet weather all year round.)

    Finished watching all ten films of “Decalog” by Krzysztof Kieslowski and thanks to the local library where we got this film. We were able to watch each segment of TV drama one day at a time.

    Here is a partial list of foreign films we rented from our library in the past many months. (There were so many that is hard to remember all. The list will get updated later) They were all excellent.

    “Christ Stopped at Eboli” by Francesco Rosi

    “Au Hasard Balthazar” by Robert Bresson

    “Good Morning” by Ozu Yasujiro.

    “Shame‘ by Ingmar Bergman

    “The film isn’t about enormous brutality, but only meanness. It is exactly like what has happened to the Czechs. They defended their rights, and now, slowly, they are being submitted to a tactic of brutalization that wears them down. Shame is not about the bombs; it is about the gradual infiltration of fear…but Shame is not precise enough. My original idea was to show only a single day before the war had broken out. But then I wrote things, and it all went wrong—I don’t know why. I haven’t seen Shame recently, and I’m a little afraid to do so. When you make such a picture, you have to be very hard on yourself. It’s a moral question.”
    — Ingmar Bergman, interview with Charles Thomas Samuels, 1971

    Two Sylvie Testud films – “Fear and Trembling” and “Murderous Maids”

    Time Out by Laurent Cantet

    Both “Fear and Trembling” and “Time Out’ deal with alienation and hellish nightmare that engulfs the workers in the corporate culture.