triple tiered rainbows

Gustave Courbet (1819-1877) L’Origine du...

Tue, 05 Jun 2012 21:21:30 -0400

Gustave Courbet (1819-1877)

L’Origine du Monde 1866

Courbet has got to be one of my top ten favorite artists… and I hate vaginas. Usually. The neat bit of trivia about this- according to historian Paul Johnson (and wikipedia), psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan purchased this painting at auction and had his stepbrother André Masson draw an abstracted sketch of the painting to hang in front of the more explicit Courbet. It was originally commissioned for a rich Turkish diplomat. Personally, I find the existence of Courbet’s more extreme paintings more realistic, beautiful, and progressive than Edouard Manet (1832-1883), although Manet exhibited his Olympia (1863) at the Paris Salon— something Courbet could not have done with L’Origine du Monde. Regardless, I prefer Courbet. Though, apples and oranges I guess.

William Holman Hunt Strayed Sheep 1952 John Ruskin, the art...

Fri, 18 May 2012 01:08:29 -0400

William Holman Hunt

Strayed Sheep 1952

John Ruskin, the art critic who influenced the Pre-Raphaelites— of whom WHH might be my favorite— in critiquing this painting said that for the first time in the history of art it revealed “the absolutely faithful balances of color and shade through which actual sunshine might be transposed.” Of course, what makes it most interesting are the symbolic messages conveyed by the deceptively simple landscape, made more obvious by the title. It’s mesmerizing. I wish artists still used paint to imitate life, I know we have film and photography to do that, but I personally feel that paint has more substance.

The Box Man by S. M. Bower (yo soy el pinhole caballero) on...

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 16:57:44 -0400

The Box Man by S. M. Bower (yo soy el pinhole caballero) on Flickr.

I found this photo while searching for a good cover of the book The Box Man by Kobo Abe. The result of that search is below. It’s a difficult book to recommend so I’m not going to. I’m also not not recommending it. I’m just saying that it is probably the strangest book I’ve ever read— the Japanese simplicity and poetry combined with the nightmarish atmosphere and disorienting “plot” made it like reading someone else’s bad dream.

George Baxter Wreck of the Reliance 1842 Color engraving (!!!)

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 15:12:57 -0400

George Baxter

Wreck of the Reliance

1842

Color engraving (!!!)

Pieter Bruegel the Elder Big Fish Eat the Little Fish 1557

Tue, 10 Apr 2012 16:30:51 -0400

Pieter Bruegel the Elder

Big Fish Eat the Little Fish

1557

Gustave Moreau The Temptation of St. Anthony 1890 This is one of...

Fri, 06 Apr 2012 23:27:12 -0400

Gustave Moreau

The Temptation of St. Anthony 1890

This is one of Moreau’s smaller watercolors— only about 5 X 9”. It seems to be an abstract mess of colors, but the more you look the more figures and shapes emerge. I love how Dore Ashton describes Moreau’s technique with these watercolors:

“Scraping, impasto, clotting, threading, dragged brush, and linear fury: audacious and unprecedented means toward an increasingly abstract end.”

Odilon Redon Death: “Mine irony surpasseth all...

Thu, 05 Apr 2012 01:48:02 -0400

Odilon Redon

Death: “Mine irony surpasseth all others”

1889 Lithograph

Inspired by Flaubert’s Temptation of St. Anthony. Redon was shy, quiet and awkward. He lived in his head, and that world became his art. He worked against the grain of his contemporaries, and he is— in my opinion, one of the finest artists of the past 200 years. The way he works with shadow in this piece is amazing, and i love the shapes: circular spiral, cylindrical Death— like a pillar— and the wave of light and flowers… Redon could do so much with Black.

Henri Rousseau War ca. 1894 “this picture may well appear...

Tue, 03 Apr 2012 15:54:00 -0400

Henri Rousseau

War ca. 1894

“this picture may well appear strange because it does not evoke anything seen before. Is that not in itself a masterly quality? [Rousseau] has the rare merit today of having a style that is completely his own. He is moving towards a new art”. - Louis Roy

The apocalyptic landscape is even more haunting because of the pastels— rather than blood red clouds they are pink, yet they mirror the pink flesh of the corpses filling the bottom of the landscape. The blacks of the birds and the horse are stark and frightening- the rigidity of the horse from tail to nose is unnerving and of course Discord’s exaggerated mouth and eyes are. ugh. wow. Undeniably one of Rousseau’s finest masterpieces.

Jean-François Millet The Keeper of the Herd 1871-74 Although...

Thu, 29 Mar 2012 16:04:00 -0400

Jean-François Millet The Keeper of the Herd

1871-74

Although Millet was a more a Naturalist painter than a Realist painter, I feel his art comes much closer to achieving a sense of reverence and the sublime akin to Medieval Christian art. Only in essence— the form is very Renaissance although the overall style is still very much Millet. I love staring at this one at the AIC.

Great Mosque of Djenné, Mali Made from adobe and palm logs (and...

Wed, 28 Mar 2012 16:38:07 -0400

Great Mosque of Djenné, Mali

Made from adobe and palm logs (and other things). Originally erected in the 1300s, this current incarnation dates back to 1906, though the form remains pretty much the same.

Mary Magdalene sculpture— part of St. Johns’...

Tue, 27 Mar 2012 20:33:07 -0400

Mary Magdalene sculpture— part of St. Johns’ Cathedral in Torun, Poland

Still from the film BOOM! (1968) by Joseph Losey Elizabeth...

Mon, 19 Mar 2012 22:01:00 -0400

Still from the film BOOM! (1968) by Joseph Losey

Elizabeth Taylor wasn’t even 34 when she played the 50ish frumpy Martha in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. It’s so easy to forget this. It was only two years later she played Flora “Sissy” Goforth in BOOM! Sissy is supposed to be a sick woman at the end of her life— yet just as in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? her portrayal of a woman beyond her years is perfect.

The film bombed. It’s still pretty difficult to find any good reviews of this sublime film.

It is sublime— the colors are sensual, the costumes are outrageous, the dialogue is compelling and meaningful and John Barry’s score is magnificent. I can understand why this was a commercial success, but how can so many critics fail to see this film’s genius?

To be fair, it is an adaptation of one of Tennessee William’s least popular plays— the 1963 The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore. Williams’ plays from the 60s were more daring and experimental and, of course, much less popular with critics and audiences. Sissy’s opposite in the film was intended to be played by SUPER HOT actor James Fox, but Taylor insisted hubby Richard Burton play the character. This also contributed to the film’s failure.

Richard Burton is a phenomenal actor, and Burton and Taylor had a fascinating screen chemistry—especially in this film— but the choice helped to obscure the meaning and atmosphere of the film. It should be a tale of an old dying woman taunted by the memory of youth and beauty. It ends up as something else, but it’s still quite effective and beautiful.

The film is filmed entirely in a glorious sun drenched estate in southern Italy. The estate is perched on the edge of a cliff 1000 feet above the incredibly azure sea. The camera takes full advantage of this setting— and Taylor’s costumes are both numerous and fabulous. These facts alone would make this film worth watching.

9/10

College feat. Electric Youth - A Real Hero ‘Drive original...

Sat, 24 Sep 2011 05:01:58 -0400

College feat. Electric Youth - A Real Hero ‘Drive original soundtrack’ (by valeriejetaime)

the blessing of mp3 players is: creating a soundtrack for life around you. sometimes a song comes along that fits so well with your surroundings it becomes a transcendental experience. tonight this was that song. every step of my purple nike hightops fit the beats of this song. the neighborhood grew around the melody— the houses with their iron grating could be seen as sterile and uninviting, but all i saw were the flowers intwined in the bars, the cars parked on the street made me wonder of each life that lived behind the wheels— why did they park here? every crack in the sidewalk was a wonder, pure natural beauty. the empty storefronts, the empty restaurants, the empty bars could have been my playthings— but instead they were lonely entities, craving human touch. not even the knowledge that i can have only two hours rest can ruin the sublime emotions running in my veins while this song is playing. i didn’t think that could happen from a song heard in a film. i thought its power rested in the film (Drive) itself. but i’m here to say: i feel invincible.

"‘Stir the fire, Denniston, for any sake. That’s a cold night,’ said MacPhee...."

Sat, 03 Sep 2011 19:55:00 -0400

““‘Stir the fire, Denniston, for any sake. That’s a cold night,’ said MacPhee. ‘It must be cold outside,’ said Dimble. All thought of that: of stiff grass, hen-roosts, dark places in the middle of woods, graves. Then of the sun’s dying, the Earth gripped, suffocated, in airless cold, the black sky lit only with stars. And then, not even stars: the heat-death of the universe, utter and final blackness of nonentity from which Nature knows no return. Another life? ‘Possibly,’ thought MacPhee. ‘I believe,’ thought Denniston. But the old life gone, all its times, all its hours and days, gone. Can even Omnipotence bring back? Where do years go, and why? Man never would understand it. The misgiving deepened. Perhaps there was nothing to be understood.””

- C.S. Lewis in That Hideous Strength

This passage affected me like few passages ever have. I still have mixed feelings about the book itself, but Lewis is still a damn fine writer.

Inspirational Shortpants (avec paroles) by Parenthetical...

Thu, 01 Sep 2011 21:04:00 -0400

Inspirational Shortpants (avec paroles) by Parenthetical Girls

And lest we made some grave mistakes/ but rest assured that help is on the way

Now that we are free from lingering dreams/ that never amount to anything

Well this will be our year THIS WILL BE OUR YEAR

THIS WILL BE OUR YEAR!!!!

the theme song for 2011.

i have no idea what this is. i found it while looking for...

Tue, 30 Aug 2011 02:19:02 -0400

i have no idea what this is. i found it while looking for non-lame posters with Socrates “wisdom begins in wonder” quote. it’s like a superheroed The Rock (peter blume). pretty rocking.

Midnight City by M83 To kick off SYNTHursdays (Songs You Need To...

Fri, 29 Jul 2011 17:19:41 -0400

Midnight City by M83

To kick off SYNTHursdays (Songs You Need To Hear ursdays) here’s m83’s new single which if you haven’t listened to yet— prepare for jissom to spray from your ears.

This song is everything that’s good about m83 compressed into 4 minutes of GLORIOUS pop. It gets better after every listen, believe me— I had it on repeat at work today for over an hour.

This is one I hope to be dancing to at Berlin in the weeks to come…

Dick and Pynchon.

Wed, 13 Jul 2011 14:32:14 -0400

on many of Philip K. Dick’s novels there’s a little blurb by the Village Voice that calls him “the poor man’s Pynchon.” sure, maybe Dick’s work isn’t as convoluted and detached as Pynchon’s and the fact that it’s all “throwaway” sci-fi stuff obviously derides its quality in the literary world. or whatever.

don’t get me wrong, i love me some Pynchon. Sometimes. It’s just that i always want/love to read Philip K. Dick all of the time, forever.

Here’s what I’m reading now:

Pynchon’s work is typically distinguished by his myriad characters with weird names and convoluted plot meanderings and all the books i’ve read by him involve mass conspiracies (or imagined/ maybe not imagined conspiracies. or something). In a way, this book is not much different. The difference is in how easy it is to read. Yeah, there are a thousand characters with names like Bambi, Coy Harlingen, Japonica Fenway, Motella and Jade. The plot is kind of preposterous and perhaps a bit contrived, but it’s totally, like, a lot of fun? It’s set in L.A. during the death of the 60s, and pretty much every character is one kind of dope fiend or another. Doc, our protag, is a perpetually stoned Private Investigator. Somehow. He usually just fins himself in the wrong places at the wrong times, and the main reason he’s working the case the book centers around his for his “ex-old lady.” I used to recommend The Crying of Lot 49 as an intro to Pynchon— which is still probably the best launching platform for his other works— but this is for sure the easiest, most enjoyable read he has ever published. HILARIOUS. and, he, like, totally captures? the way 60s chicks? talk? or maybe it’s just, like, an L.A. thing?

here’s a book I finished recently:

Yeah, weird cover. The book’s pretty much about a 40,000 lb shape shifting, possibly senile, possibly omnipotent creature on a distant planet who brings several hundred artisans (such as our protag, the pot healer) to assist him/her in raising an ancient cathedral from the ocean floor. An ocean that is also a dark separate world where evil duplicates of everything live— as well as the rotting corpse of our protagonist. oh yeah, and the planet is populated mostly by these ghost like creatures who have a book— one book— that contains the entire pre-recorded history of the planet, and it constantly changes every day.

it’s one of Dick’s strangest books, it’s dark and weird and really funny. the Glimmung— the 40,000lb creature— can appear as a variety of… things. Including a loop of fire and a loop of water intersecting with a paisley cloth in between with the faded face of a teenage girl on it. yeah. the dialogue in this book is also priceless, especially between the Glimmung and the pot-healer.

Dick often wrote books thinking they would never remain in print given the genre he worked in, and this is what elevates his work beyond that of Pynchon. Dick never set out to create a masterpiece of literary profundity— he managed to do it even in his “throwaway” novels. this book really touched me… the pot-healer’s plight is tragic, no one on Earth is in need of his skill, a skill once revered is defunct (how prophetic) and this mysterious creature offers him a chance to mean something again… it’s a beautiful story and although i may say this about every PKD book i read— it’s one of my favorites.

also i read in someone’s review of PKD that Pynchon was the dickless man’s Dick. Hah!

i touch a red button by David Lynch with Lights by...

Wed, 13 Jul 2011 13:34:18 -0400

i touch a red button by David Lynch with Lights by Interpol

interpol has been increasingly underwhelming since their debut, but this song is one of the better ones from the new album. actually it’s the only one i can remember from the new album.

According to pitchfork this video premiered in conjunction with this song at Coachella.

i love it. the shakiness of the “camera” is what makes it so disturbing.

Mr. Linden’s Library by Harris Burdick i don’t...

Tue, 12 Jul 2011 21:53:47 -0400

Mr. Linden’s Library by Harris Burdick

i don’t remember how old i was when i started reading chris van allsburg. i do know it was before Jumanji came out, though that wasn’t the first CVA book i read. in fact, i don’t think i read that one until after the movie came out. i remember thinking it odd how the filmmaker’s distorted the book’s quiet and haunting sense of irony… not that i didn’t slash don’t love the movie— for what it is. what else is a screenwriter going to do with some twenty odd pages and illustrations? I feel the same with the film adaptation of The Polar Express, which was one of the first CVA books I read. The film’s story and characters are just fucking awful, unfortunately, but the art is very reminiscent of the book’s illustrations and is quite gorgeous to look at.

the thing is, turning a chris van allsburg book into a film that would faithfully capture the atmosphere, themes, and beauty of his work would never appeal to children today. his work is haunting, illuminating, understated, surreal and sometimes almost frightening and perplexing.

and these books are children’s picture books! i must’ve been at least six or seven when i read my first CVA book. I can’t remember exactly which one it was, but it was either The Stranger or The Sweetest Fig. The Stranger is about a farming family who takes in a mute stranger— they dance and laugh amiably at his strange behavior, but one day the stranger realizes the farm he is staying on is the only farm that seems to still be enjoying summer. He picks a green leaf from a nearby tree and blows on it until it turns orange, then he flees never to be seen again.

i remember thinking it was the strangest story i ever read, and it took me several reads to understand the story. i like to think of it as my first Lynchian experience— it was certainly the introduction to my love for surreal art. The illustrations for The Stranger were very French Impressionistic and exceedingly beautiful, CVA captured the carefree bliss of summer and the bittersweet actuality of Summer’s End.

Perhaps my favorite book by him is The Mysteries of Harris Burdick. This book showed me, for the first time, that something can still be compelling without relying on a traditional narrative. The book is a series of illustrations with no connection other than that they are the supposed only surviving images from the portfolio of the mysterious Harris Burdick. CVA introduces the book by telling a fake story about how his editor had come across Harris Burdick many years ago, and that Mr. Burdick left him his portfolio with 14 images from 14 of his children’s books- each one with a title and a caption. Burdick told the editor to contact him if he wanted to publish any of the stories, but Harris Burdick was never heard from again and the editor was unable to find any trace of him or his stories.

This book is usually used as a way to inspire creative writing in children, and gosh, what a beautiful way to do it.

when i was a kid though, all these images did was inspire these big weird intangible emotions. It was not knowing what the images were about, that sense of mystery— it was exhilarating!

over the years i’ve tried to put in words what art means to me. what makes a film a work of art, or a song or a painting— whatever. kind of a critical mission statement. the best i’ve come up with is kinda trite— i consider as art those things which inspire an overwhelming emotional response. it’s sosososososo subjective obvsly.

but it’s kinda dumb to put it into words— it shouldn’t be put into words. knowing things is overrated and usually disappointing. not knowing is an endless adventure.

anyway, all of this to say: Chris Van Allsburg is one of the most important influences in my life.