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Wednesday, August 30, 2006

Union Square under Blizzard - one of the oldest New York movies

Childe Hassam - Winter in Union Square, 1889–90, New York Metropolitan Museum of Art














(Click here for the Romanian version)


Childe Hassam - Winter in Union Square, 1889–90: from 1889 to 1895, Hassam worked in a studio at 95 Fifth Avenue, not far from Union Square, one of his favorite subjects during this period. This picture shows a view of the square looking south from the corner of 16th Street. In the background, the hotel Morton House is seen on the left and, across from it on the right is the domed building of the Domestic Sewing Machine Company. Barely visible between them is the spire of Trinity Church
(excerpt from the web catalogue of the Metropolitan Museum)

Union Square: the place where Broadway and Park Avenue meet the 14th Street, one of the focal points of Manhattan, always crowded, it's like a climax for Greenwich Village and Chelsea, for Gramercy and the Flatiron District, so distinct each other and they join here: perhaps the busiest place in the city that is the world's busiest.

Here starts the 4th Avenue that becomes Bowery Street when it reaches Chinatown - you can say the Union Square is the place where Broadway and Bowery see each other - a huge metronome stands between them, on the façade of a Circuit City store. On the opposite side of the square there is the statue of Washington - there are also the monuments of La Fayette, Lincoln and Gandhi. And almost always the square is full of tents and stands - it's the market place of Manhattan.

One of my first days in New York I walked on Broadway from Spring Street up to Times Square. It was winter and I was wearing a fur cap. As I was passing Union Square, two young girls tried to seize my cap to make fun. I succeeded to avoid them, but it was a tough moment. As I renounced after that event to wear the cap, I saw no more reason to elude Union Square, anyway, you have to pass there almost every day if you are in New York and want to go from one place to another. One of the largest subway stations is there - Union Square is like a hub for all directions.

I was many times there, but I would rather let a painting and a movie tell the story of Union Square. Both made in the same epoch, a painting of Childe Hassam, and a movie whose creator remained unknown.

One of the oldest New York movies, from 1899. It opens a collection of small movies about Manhattan that were made between 1899 - 1940. I watched the whole collection yesterday - around 150 minutes in all. Today I came back to the first one and I watched it several times, enchanted.

In the Grip of the Blizzard, that's the title. It's March 1899 and Union Square is under the blizzard. I knew that winter in New York can be sometimes far from a mild affair, but in that year it was total craziness - the Great Blizzard of 1899, as it would remain known in history.

The movie is only two minutes long, but it's like a charm. Street cars running on Broadway and on the 14th Street, slowing to give priority to carts and carriages: it's so charming, it's incredible. And the camera takes slowly a circular view, loitering on the vehicles, on the drifts of snow, on the people. Dziga Vertov would make The Man with a Camera in 1929, but his eye is already here in the Blizzard, the same eye perceiving the street scenery.

And the rhythm of Vertov is also here, in the Blizzard: the pace is alert while each image is treated with careful consideration. It's like good jazz, each theme with a very distinct place, the succession of themes very rapid.

Then there is the main character - a man with hat and shovel, slaloming among vehicles, arriving near a drift of snow, moving around in an amazing Chaplinian ballet, announcing Charlot, only Charlot would come in 1914!




A movie of two minutes and the creator posses the eye and the tempo of Vertov and the choreographic vision of Chaplin, only this creator is unknown! All we know is that In the Grip of the Blizzard was produced for The American Mutoscope and Biograph Company (they had started in 1895 and this movie had the production number 875). By that time the studio was placed on a rooftop just in one of the corners of Union Square.

And the painting of Hassam... Pissaro comes in mind, and for good reason, because here, in this Winter in Union Square Hassam is a great artist who knows to discover the delicate beauty of the busiest place of the busiest city.

(New York, New York)

(Early Movies)

Tuesday, August 29, 2006

Cronicile Feliciei




Felicia Antip: Pierre Vidal-Naquet

Biblio Monde: Pierre Vidal-NaquetHistorien spécialiste de la Grèce antique et intellectuel engagé dans la défense des droits de l'homme.
Né en 1930, Pierre Vidal-Naquet a 9 ans lorsque éclata la deuxième guerre mondiale. Il en a 11, quand son père se voit interdire d'exercer sa profession d'avocat (spécialisé en droit littéraire) au prétexte qu'il est d'ascendance juive.

La seule religion pratiquée dans sa famille, issue de la communauté juive du Comtat venaissin mais farouchement laïque et républicaine, n'était-elle pas celle de la culture ?

Si bien qu'aujourd'hui, pour Pierre Vidal-Naquet, il n'est de mission juive dans le monde que dans la diaspora, et non dans le sionisme : Être juif, c'est être comme un moucheron qui taraude, un moustique qui pique.

Toute ma vie a été marquée par le récit que m'a fait mon père à la fin de 1941 ou au début de 1942 de l'affaire Dreyfus (...) C'est aussi à travers l'Affaire que j'ai été formé non seulement à la politique mais à la morale et à l'histoire.

Il a quatorze ans quand ses parents sont arrêtés à Marseille (mai 1944), déportés puis assassinés par les nazis. C'est parce que son père a été torturé par la Gestapo, que plus tard, il ne tolèrera que l'on puisse torturer au nom de l'État français.

En 1958, il signe le Manifeste des 121, appel à la désobéissance contre la guerre d'Algérie, et écrit son premier livre, L'Affaire Audin. Ce premier ouvrage lui vaut une suspension d'enseignement, mais le rend célèbre comme militant de droits de l'homme.

L'historien doit prendre part à la vie de la cité. Vous savez, avant d'être déporté, mon père a été torturé par la Gestapo à Marseille. L'idée que les mêmes tortures puissent être infligées d'abord en Indochine et à Madagascar puis en Algérie par des officiers ou des policiers français m'a fait horreur. Mon action n'a pas d'autres sources que cette horreur absolue. En un sens, il s'agit de patriotisme.


Pierre Vidal-Naquet sera ensuite de tous les combats, de toutes les dénonciations d'injustice : de la guerre du Vietnam à celle d'Irak sur le plan international. L'historien épris de vérité s'engage au plan national pour réhabilitation de la mémoire attaquée de Jean Moulin, la dénonciation du révisionnisme...

Lycéen, il est un lecteur passionné des tragédies grecques et classiques. En 1955, il passe l'agrégation et se spécialise dans l'étude de la Grèce antique. Même dans le cadre, il ne néglige ni le politique ni l'économique ni le social ni le culturel.

Historien de réputation internationale, Pierre Vidal-Naquet est, de 1969 à 1990, directeur d'études à l'École des hautes études en sciences sociales. Succédant à Jean-Pierre Vernant, il prend la direction du laboratoire Centre Louis Gernet de recherches comparées sur les sociétés anciennes.

Cet historien militant, nourri de littérature, se rattache volontiers à l'école de la micro-histoire fondée en Italie par Carlo Guinzburg et Giovanni Levi. Il revendique pour maîtres les historiens Henri-Irénée Marrou, Marc Bloch dont le testament, L'Étrange défaite, l'a profondément marqué et les spécialistes de l'Antiquité grecque que sont Jean-Pierre Vernant, Moses Finley et Arnaldo Momigliano. Professeur à l'École des hautes études en sciences sociales, il a notamment publié, en collaboration avec Jean-Pierre Vernant, Mythe et tragédie en Grèce ancienne (deux volumes, 1972, 1986). Son ouvre essentielle est regroupée dans Le Chasseur noir (1981). Il a aussi réuni de nombreuses études sur le judaïsme et la Shoah dans Les Juifs, la mémoire et le présent (1991).

En juillet 2003, il participe à l'appel « Une autre voix juive », qui regroupe des personnalités juives solidaires du peuple palestinien, a estimant que le premier ministre israélien « spécule sur la sensibilité légitime des citoyens juifs au fait israélien pour les détourner des valeurs de la citoyenneté au bénéfice d'une idéologie nationaliste et d'un racisme anti-arabe ».

Je fais une distinction. Si les Palestiniens ont commis des fautes très lourdes, la politique menée par Ariel Sharon est proprement criminelle. Il ne faut pas hésiter à le dire. Nous prenons beaucoup trop de gants actuellement. Je suis à ce titre scandalisé de voir que la communauté juive est soit muette, soit approbatrice face à la politique de Sharon. Aujourd'hui, la première urgence est de séparer les combattants. L'action doit être menée si possible au niveau européen; à défaut au niveau français. Le ministre des Affaires étrangères dit des choses justes, mais celles-ci ne se traduisent pas en actes. Il faut à tout prix intervenir, envoyer des émissaires, et même des troupes si nécessaires. Il faut, je le répète, séparer les combattants.

L'Affaire Audin, 1957-1978
La Raison d'État
Mythe et tragédie en Grèce ancienne
Torture dans la République
Les Crimes de l'armée française, Algérie 1954-1962
Les Juifs, la mémoire et le présent
La Démocratie grecque vue d'ailleurs
Assassins de la mémoire
Travail et esclavage en Grèce ancienne
Le Chasseur noir
Démocratie, citoyenneté et héritage gréco-romain

Citatele sunt preluate din fisa literara a lui Pierre Vidal-Naquet prezentata in Biblio Monde

Monday, August 28, 2006

Parajanov - Arabeskebi Pirosmanis Temaze

Niko Pirosmani, A Janitor

(Click here for the Romanian version)

This Janitor opens the Arabesques on the Pirosmani Theme. No wonder. Parajanov made this short movie after spending a good part of the 1970's in the detention camps - it sounds now absurd, but the Soviet regime was not willing to tolerate his masterpieces, Tini Zabutykh Predkiv (Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors), and Sayat Nova (even the name of the Armenian troubadour of the XVIII-th century was for them unbearable, so the title was changed to Color of Pomegranates).
So Parajanov knew too well all the facets of the oppression, and this Janitor painted by Pirosmani is a terrific portrait, there is a forceful lesson in it, because this stupid brute is also very human - what we realize with horror is that any of us can become such a janitor, it is enough to get some authority.

And Parajanov's movie stays a lot on the face of the janitor, then slowly comes down to his feet, then again on the face.

Then follows this camel with its master, an image chosen by Parajanov just to allow us to come back from the Hell. However, there is here a story, between the Tatar and the camel. Pirosmani does not tell us the story, it's left for us to imagine it. What Pirosmani does here is to render a subtle tension which forces us to assume our responsibility of deciding on the story.

Niko Pirosmani, A Tatar Cameleer
With this physician riding a donkey we are for sure far away from the Hell of the Janitor. Through Pirosmani themes, Parajanov draws the Arabesques on our human nature - there is the evil in us, there are the untold stories, but it is much more, we can be nice, sometimes a bit ridiculous, not necessarily the bad guys.


Niko Pirosmani, Physician on a Donkey

This little girl with a patterned balloon accompanies in the movie the little boy riding a donkey - the two paintings are juxtaposed, so the balloon looks like it is shared by them.

Horror, subtlety, kind irony, delicacy - here is the whole universe of Pirosmani.


Niko Pirosmani, Little Girl with a Patterned Balloon
Niko Pirosmani, Little Boy Riding a Donkey
And Parajanov would make in his last years other two masterpieces, Ambavi Suramis Tsikhitsa (The Legend of the Suram Fortress), and Ashik Kerib.

(Parajanov)

(Pirosmani)

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Sunday, August 27, 2006

Niko Pirosmani, Rustaveli

Niko Pirosmani, Schota Rustaveli (Click here for the Romanian version)

He who created the firmament by the omnipotent might of his power,
Gave breath to all living creatures and to man spirits celestial,
Gave us the world to possess with all its unlimited varieties,
And Kings ordained by Him, each in His own image.

So begins the Prologue to The Knight in the Panther's Skin; these verses come to us from the XII-th century. Pirosmani would make the portrait of Rustaveli eight hundred years later.

There are no written records of Rustaveli's life. The only authentic record we possess is the manuscript of his epic poem. It would be printed much, much later, by 1712.

I sing of the lion whom the use of lance, shield and sword adorns,
Of Tamar, the Queen of Queens, the ruby-cheeked and jet-haired.
How shall I dare pay tribute to her in praiseworthy verses,
Whom to look upon is to feast upon the choicest of honey?


And so we find out that Rustaveli was a contemporary of Queen Tamar - venerated by Georgians - her epoch was the greatest in their history.

I, Rustaveli, whose heart is pierced through by his sorrows have threaded Like a necklace of pearls a tale told until now as a tale.
I have found this Persian tale, and have set it in Georgian verse
Until now like a peerless pearl it was rolled on the palm of the hand.

whose heart is pierced by his sorrows, this reminds me of the leitmotiv of the Parajanov's movie Color of Pomegranate, there a verse of Sayat Nova is repeated obsessively, My life was sorrow. Sayat Nova, another great poet of the region of Transcaucasia.

Thinking at Rustaveli and Sayat Nova, at Pirosmani and at Parajanov - their change of replicas throughout the centuries. Pirosmani made the portraits of Rustaveli and Queen Tamar. Sayat Nova came back to life after hundreds of years through Parajanov' s masterpiece. Later Parajanov would make Arabeskebi Pirosmanis Temaze (Arabesques on the Pirosmani Theme); I will try to write something in a couple of days about this movie.

In the Arabic tongue a lover is called a madman,
A lover must never reveal his love but keep it hidden.

I'm using here the English translation offered by Venera Urushadze.

What would have been the source for Pirosmani's image of Rustaveli? It is believed that one of the frescoes of the Georgian Monastery of the Saint Cross in Jerusalem depicts Rustaveli - of course, Pirosmani did not see that fresco (anyway, the fresco shows a man in his old ages - it seems that Rustaveli ended his days at Jerusalem as a monk at that monastery).

Pirosmani should have known by instinct how to imagine his hero - they both belonged to the same cultural area - a national culture carries a living spirit flowing through centuries and inspiring the artists.

All at once they saw by the stream a stranger sitting and weeping.
He held a black horse by the bridle and looked like a lion and a hero.
His armour, saddle and bridle were thickly studded with pearls.
The rose was frozen by tears that welled up from his grief-stricken-heart.


The fresco on one of the pillars of the Monastery of the Cross has the hieratic style of any Eastern Christian icon – the painter of the XIIth century was interested only in the essence, the longing for the likeness with the Image of God. In 1852, a French artist, Fliert, tried also to render the image of Rustaveli, based on an old Georgian manuscript.
Shota Rustaveli, a painting by the French artist Fliert based on an old Georgian manuscript. 1852


Shota Rustaveli, fresco on one of the pillars of the Georgian Monastery of the Saint Cross in Jerusalem




















(Icon and Orthodoxy)

(Pirosmani)

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Niko Pirosmani, Actress Margarita

Niko Pirosmani, Actress Margarita

(Click here for the Romanian version)

Who was this Margarita? There is so much legend...

The carts were full of flowers up till edges, with drops of water, seemed like the early-dew sprinkled them with billions of rainbow drops.
The carts stopped at Margarita's house. Carters talked awhile with each other in low voices, and then started to unload the carts and throw flowers on the ground in front of gates, covering stones in pavement and road. Yes, these were thousands of flowers that Niko got for his beloved woman.

(Konstantin Paustovskii)

Niko didn't know what is love before he met singer-dancer in cafe-shaitan. In Mushtaid Garden, on lightened stage, accompanied with sounds of mazurka beautiful and alluring madam Margarita appeared before of amazed public, she was dancing and singing charming and cheerful Paris songs... Niko couldn't stop gazing at her, he was captivated.
(K. Zdanevich)

Margarita's face is done according to the conventions of great naives, by which everything is too big and out of proportions. Oversized lips, bulging eyeballs, enormous years. Niko gave this portrait to Margarita. The girl shriecked in indignation. His talent condemned him to solitude.
(Ryszard Kapuscinski)

And one day Margarita left for Paris. He would start to wander through dukhans (old Georgian inns) and to paint there, living in lonely abandonment. The portrait of Rustaveli is from these late years of the painter.

Over and over again he painted his feasts, with that table against a mountainous landscape. He was fifty-four when he died, in Tbilisi, in some room, of unknown causes, hungry, maybe mad.
(Ryszard Kapuscinski)



Niko Pirosmani, Family Feast



(Pirosmani)

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Saturday, August 26, 2006

Snapshots without Camera - One is different

Michael Godard, Martini Club
The Martini Club
of
Lost Snapshots





O fetita sub zece ani intra dupa mine in ascensor, cu tricicleta ei. La ce etaj? o intreb. Unu, imi raspunde. Apas butonul pentru unu, apoi pentru etajul meu, patru. Oamenii locuiesc la toate numerele, spune ea. Sunt de acord, iar ea adauga, insa unu e diferit.

A girl under ten years follows me with her tricycle in the elevator. I ask her, what floor? One, she says. I push the button for one, then for my floor, four. She says, people live at all numbers. I agree, and she adds, but one is different.

Women in Priesthood

NYT: The Rev. Alise D. Barrymore, center, who had to leave her denomination to be ordained, now serves a nondenominational church near Chicago
The issue is actually as old as the Church is: women came first to the grave of Jesus. Some Christian churches admit only men in the clergy on the grounds that while there is a common priesthood for all believers, this is expressed in specific ways: as St. Paul says, there are different workings, different forms of service, but the same Lord, the same God (1 Cor 12, 5-6). Other churches consider that there is no reason to bar women from priesthood - the Apostle tells us about specific workings for each individual - after all, the text from 1 Corinthians does not speak about specific workings for each sex. Says Rev. Dottie Escobedo-Frank, I speak differently than a man does. To hear the fullness of God's voice, you need to hear both men and women.

What's the situation in the American Church? Mainline traditional protestant churches ordain women, while most evangelical ones don't.

This year women were elected to lead the Episcopal Church, as well as the United-Methodist and Presbyterian Churches, but how looks the more detailed picture, at all hierarchical levels? There is an article in today's NY Times on this issue.

(Church in America)

Friday, August 25, 2006

The Boulevard of Broken Dreams

Edward Hopper, The Nighthawks, 1943, Chicago Art Institute
(Click here for the Romanian version)

I saw it firstly in an apartment in Manhattan. A framed poster of The Nighthawks. By that time I didn’t know anything about Hopper. The image had some strange power, it was like telling you that there was a story behind, or more. A bar, looking like virtually any given bar in the Greenwich Village. The name, Phillies, was not meant to give a localization, rather to suggest some indefinite place anywhere in that universe fastened around Christopher Street and Sheridan Square.

I discovered him again in Bucharest. The bookstore at the Dalles Foundation, a Hopper album – and on the cover, The Nighthawks. Near the albums of Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, Georgia O'Keefe. Only Hopper was looking alone, even among them. The painter of loneliness – lonely people, alone at a table, alone in a room, alone in a crowd. Alone among alone objects.

The Nighthawks, a couple, each one alone, like strangers, then another drinker, and the bartender - all caged behind the huge window – a mystery in each character, almost unbearable.

What could be the story of the couple, strangers living together? And what story carries the other man, alone with his glass? And the bartender? What does he know about these stories? Could even be Hopper, this bartender? Omniscient and discreet? Skeptic and understanding everything? A skeptical humanist of Chekhovian elegance?

And the explanation in the album was flowing, the heroes, life-weary, no illusions, à la James Dean, à la Humphrey Bogart.

The original is in Chicago, at the Art Institute. Copies spread all over the world.

At the Washington National Gallery, another Hopper, Cape Cod Evening. Another couple – he seems lost into his thoughts, while looking absently at their dog. The dog is full of life, looks smart, curious, keen… in dialogue with the wind. She is also looking at the dog, while smiling. There is in her smile irony, and resignation, and understanding, everything. Is that woman actually Hopper? Her smile like his smile, from a self-portrait seen in the album in Bucharest.

Edward Hopper, Cape Cod Evening, 1939, Washington DC National Art Gallery

New York, Whitney Museum, a Hopper room. Why South Carolina Morning (a woman rested on her door) and Seven AM (the window of a pharmacy, with a wall clock) suggest the same loneliness?

Edward Hopper, Soir Bleu, 1914, New Yok, Whitney Museum

Soir Bleu, with a Pierrot in a café. The other characters seem like coming from the universe of Cezanne, only the waitress looks like painted by Guy Pené du Bois. Each one alone – and Pierrot as a synthesis of all the others.

Why is Soir Bleu considered an insuccess? It’s fantastic. Is Pierrot actually Hopper? His last painting would show two comedians on the stage, behind them the curtain, in front of them the attendance – they are not on the canvas, for we are the attendance – the comedians are Hopper and his wife, also an artist. Two comedians, the name of the painting.

Almodovar in his movies is obsessed by the existential condition of the actor. An actor wears always a mask, does he exist as himself any more? Or has he become just a wanderer from one character to another?

Small Town Station, Second Story Sunlight, Railroad Sunset – known from the album seen so many times in Bucharest, now hanging on the walls at Whitney.

And I was dreaming again at The Nighthawks, at those life-weary heroes, à la James Dean, à la Humphrey Bogart… I ordered a copy, it came by mail after a week.

Well, it was The Nighthawks while it was not.

For it was The Boulevard of Broken Dreams - a replica to The Nighthawks. The characters were exactly James Dean and Humphrey Bogart, the woman was Marilyn Monroe. And the bartender was Elvis Presley.

I walk this empty street
On the Boulevard of Broken Dreams
Where the city sleeps...
I walk a lonely road.
The only one that I have ever known.
Don't know where it goes.
But it's home to me and I walk alone.
I walk this empty street.
On the Boulevard of Broken Dreams
.

So I discovered another painter, Gottfried Helnwein – he painted the replica. One of the few exciting painters of today (according to Norman Mailer). And Bogart, Dean, Marilyn and Elvis are from now on together, smiling at us in the eternity. Loneliness is over.


Gottfried Helnwein, Boulevard of Broken Dreams




(New York, New York)

(Hopper)

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The War Photographs of Robert Capa

Robert Capa, Omaha Beach, June 6, 1944









(Click here for the Romanian version)

June 6, 1944, D-Day Landing. Eleven photographs shot there, on Omaha Beach. Robert Capa was there as a war photographer, among the soldiers of the 16th Regiment of the 1st Infantry Division.
The war correspondent has his stake — his life — in his own hands, and he can put it on this horse or that horse, or he can put it back in his pocket at the very last minute ... I am a gambler. I decided to go in with Company E in the first wave (Robert Capa).
Today we name them embedded correspondents. He took part as an embedded correspondent in all major battles of his epoch.


Robert Capa, Omaha Beach, June 6, 1944Only eleven photos survived - Capa had taken 108 pictures in the first couple of hours of the invasion. Later, someone would made a mistake in the darkroom - only eleven frames in total were recovered. They remained known as the Magnificent Eleven of the D-Day.


Robert Capa, Paris, August 25, 1944











This image is from Paris, August 25, 1944. The day Paris became free again, after years of Nazi occupation. Capa was there, embedded within the American troops.
He was again in Paris - the city of his second birth. His real name was Endre Friedmann. He left his native country, Hungary, when he was barely 20 and settled firstly in Berlin, where he discovered his passion for photography. With the arise of Hitler at power he was forced to leave Germany. He came to Paris. Here he met Cartier-Bresson and David Seymour (Chim) - the three would remain life friends - later, after the World War II, they would start the Magnum Photos. Capa would settle later in New York, but Paris remained the city of his heart.
He met in Paris his first great love, Gerda. She persuaded him to adopt a new name, as she was devising for them a very careful marketing approach - so the Endre Friedmann became Robert Capa. Gerda would die in the Civil War in Spain, she was there a war correspondent.
Robert Capa, Trotzki in Copenhagen, 1932Was Robert Capa a Communist? Well, I think, in his youth he was far too radical to be a Communist. In his adult years he became too rich and famous. And he was far too independent. He never could be other than a man of his own. A Leftist, yes, he was all his life. In 1932 he made several photos of Trotzki - who was for a brief period in Copenhagen.

Perhaps the most famous photo shot by Capa is this one, Death of a Loyalist Militiaman in the Spanish Civil War. It surprises the very moment the militiaman is killed. It's like a premonition - Capa would die in the First Indochina War, in 1954. He was with a French unit, they were passing a dangerous area - suddenly Capa jumped out of the jeep and ran ahead, to photograph the advance - he stepped on a landmine.

If your pictures aren't good enough, you're not close enough
(Robert Capa)


Robert Capa, Death of a Militiaman

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Thursday, August 24, 2006

René-Jacques, Montmartre, 1950

René-Jacques, Montmartre, 1950Les Escaliers de Montmartre. Here is the image shot by René-Jacques, in 1950. Great photographers were attracted by them, Brassaï and Teo Tarras among others.
An inclined railway, le Funiculaire de Montmartre, accompanies the stairs.
Such a funicular is very interesting stuff. I traveled in inclined railways in Budapest and Dresden.
To walk the Escaliers, to take the Funiculaire? If you have time to spend, the choice is the Funiculaire, there is always a waiting line. If you are busy, the choice remains the Funiculaire - the Escaliers are for dreamers.

I remember the photo of one of my schoolmates, on the Escaliers de Montmartre. More than thirty years had passed, still she was wearing on her face the same light as in high school.

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Tuesday, August 22, 2006

The Suppers of Pirosmani

Niko Pirosmani, Family
(Click here for the Romanian version)

Pirosmani painted suppers like Veronese, says Ryszard Kapuscinki in his Imperium, but he adds immediately, only Niko's suppers are Georgian and secular.
Against a background of the Georgian landscape, a richly laid table; at this table Georgians are drinking and eating. The table is in the foreground. It is the most important thing. The culinary fascinated Niko. What will there be to eat, what will man gorge himself on? All this Niko would paint. He depicted what he would like to eat and what he would not eat, not today and maybe nor ever.
Niko Pirosmani, FoodTables piled high. Roasted lambs. Greasy piglets. Wines red and heavy like calves' blood. Juicy watermelons. Fragrant pomegranates.
There is a kind of masochism in this painting, a sticking on the knife into one's own stomach, although Niko's art is cheerful, even humorous.








(Pirosmani)

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Annie Proulx

Image from Brokeback Mountain
(Click here for the Romanian version)
Ennis del Mar wakes before five, wind broking the trailer, hissing in around the aluminium door and window frames. The shirts hanging on a nail shudder slightly in the draft.
Annie Proulx started to publish in her fifties, to become immediately a distinct and powerful voice in contemporary American literature. Her world is rural North America. Her language is the one that countrymen speak, in Newfoundland (The Shipping News), in Wyoming (Brokeback Mountain, Close Range: Wyoming Stories, Bad Dirt: Wyoming Stories 2).
He gets up, scratching the grey wedge of belly and pubic hair, shuffles to the glass burner, pours leftover coffee in a chipped enamel pan; the flame swathes it in blue.

Annie Proulx's vision is far from romantic - it's as rough as countrymen are. There is no place for illusions in her approach. There is a traditional milieu, and these rough guys are very conservative and very stubborn, only life is rough and stubborn too and claims its rights against the whole world.

He turns on the tap and urinates in the sink, pulls on his shirt and jeans, his worn boots, stamping the heels against the floor to get them full on.

And still, there is kind of warmth, kind of sympathy, in her rough stories - for these poor guys who are forced by their own nature to live their own real, against all odds.

He might have to stay with his married daughter until he picks another job, yet he is suffused with a sense of pleasure because Jack Twist was in his dream.

Today it's her birthday.




(A Life in Books)

(Filmofilia)

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Monday, August 21, 2006

Henri Rousseau le Douanier

Henri Rousseau le Douanier, Dream
(Click here for the Romanian version)

How could be this possible, a naked woman sitting on her coach in the middle of a tropical forest? Rousseau le Douanier answered with simulated innocence, the young lady was sleeping on her coach and having a dream - he just rendered the dream.

Henri Rousseau le Douanier, Tiger in SurpriseOne of the first paintings of Rousseau imagining a jungle, Tiger in surprise. Bad received by the critics - his recognition would come very late, when Picasso, Brancusi, Appolinaire, Jarry, would realize that le Douanier was a forerunner for what happened with the art in the twentieth century.



Henri Rousseau le Douanier, Pierre Loti The mysterious personage is Pierre Loti - rendered with the same simulated innocence, or, I should say, what his contemporaries perceived as innocence was hiding a certain malice.
There is these days the Rousseau exhibition at the Washington National Gallery, entitled Jungles in Paris, I visited it yesterday for the second time, and I spent about three hours. I was trying to find some correspondences with the works of Pirosmani - both are great naives, only Rousseau was somehow an actor, he played a bit the fool to sell his value.

Henri Rousseau le Douanier, Bohemienne endormie Bohemienne endormie, it seems to me fabulous. By a curious association, it reminds me a contemporary French, Guy Ferrer, though they are very distinct each other. I met with the works of Ferrer, as I met with the works of Cayron and of Tobiasse, at a very small art gallery in Georgetown, the Attis Gallery, devoted to the contemporary French art.

Henri Rousseau le Douanier, Carnaval EveningOne of the finest paintings of Rousseau, Carnival Evening, the couple comes from the celebration, and there is a mistery in everything there. Was Rousseau really a naive? Oh, yes, he was not aware at all about perspective, about foreground, and middle ground, and background, but, was he really a naive?





Henri Rousseau le Douanier, La Guerre La Guerre, full of cruelty, look at that frightening girl, running near the horse, I would range this near other great paintings about the horrors of war, near Dürer, and Goya, and Picasso.




Henri Rousseau le Douanier, Rugby Players But if you ask me which is the craziest work of Rousseau, well, this is, the Rugby Players, it belongs now to the Museum of Modern Art in New York - the exhibition in Washington DC gathered paintings of Rousseau from all over the world, from MoMA in New York and form the Chicago Institute of Art, from the Tate Gallery in London and from Musée d'Orsay in Paris, from Musée Picasso in Paris, and from the Pushkin Museum in Moscow.
The craziest painting of Rousseau, and my favorite.














(Washington DC National Gallery of Art)

Faust al lui Jan Švankmajer


Margareta, FaustTocmai am vazut pe DVD Faust al lui Jan Švankmajer - suntem in Praga anului 1994, iar un functionar oarecare se trezeste deodata in mijlocul unui spectacol de marionete care incearca sa fie o replica papusereasca la Faustul lui Marlowe. Confuzia dintre oameni si marionete, dintre spectacol si realitate, se adanceste, functionarul este atras din ce in ce mai mult de personaj, suntem oricum in Praga, gazda dintotdeauna pentru alchimisti si papusari, cineva nevazut manuieste tot timpul marionetele (sa fie oare un om? sau poate robotul lui Capek? poate chiar Golemul mestesugarit candva prin Josefov, de catre Rabbi Yehudah ben Bezalel Levai ? - la Praga multe sunt cu putinta), functionarul se transforma si el intr-o marioneta, redevine om, redevine marioneta, este atras tot mai mult de joc si nu mai poate scapa.

Papusile lui Švankmajer sunt creaturi rafinate, sculpturi in lemn dupa modele pragheze vestite ale veacului al nouasprezecelea. Exista, cum spun, in Praga o foarte lunga traditie a papusarilor, ca si a alchimistilor - pacte facute cu diavolul nu erau chiar de neconceput, si athanoarele de pe Zlatna Ulica vor fi pastrat multe taine - o parte din tainele acestea ii sunt cunoscute lui Jan Švankmajer - doar studioul cinematografic care a realizat fimul poarta chiar numele acesta, ATHANOR.

Asa ca nu e de mirare ca praghezul Švankmajer este un suprarealist intarziat, pentru ca este un alchimist intarziat, si nu este de mirare ca in filmul sau eroii sunt papusi de lemn - un alchimist stie foarte bine ca efectele de groaza se obtin mult mai direct daca este taiata o mana de lemn si nu una de carne - iar horificul este mult mai rafinat.

(Filmofilia)

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Friday, August 18, 2006

Niko Pirosmani, Lion-Sun

Niko Pirosmani, Lion-Sun There is a huge exhibition of Rousseau Le Douanier these days, at the Washington National Gallery, Jungles in Paris. The exhibition's title sounds strange, but as strange as it sounds it's nothing compared with what you see inside - it's unbelievable. I saw it in a hurry, I will try to go this coming Sunday again. It is the largest grouping ever assembled of Rousseau's iconic jungle paintings - this guy never left France, his jungles are the fantasies of a city dweller, constructed from visits to the botanical gardens and the zoo, as well as book, magazine, and postcard reproductions of dangerous beasts from distant lands.

Niko Pirosmani, Lion
Well, neither Pirosmani left ever the Tbilisi neighborhood of the lumpen and the poor, Nachalovce. His bestiarium is the fruit of his imagination - his Giraffe, his Lion-Sun, his Lion, his wild Boar.

Pirosmani's techniques were imposed by his extreme poverty. The predominant color at Pirosmani is black - he got his paint from coffin makers. He collected old tin signboards to have something to paint on. That is why lettering shows sometimes through in the background - you can see some Magaz or Tabak. The advertisement in gold and red on these signboards - Pirosmani's black-and-white visions (Ryszard Kapuscinski, Imperium).

(Click here for the Romanian version)






(Pirosmani)

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Niko Pirosmani, A Wild Boar

(http://www.paintingmania.com/wild-boar-164_13432.html)
no copyright infringement intended



Were this Boar the only painting left from him, Pirosmani would still remain one of the greatest's.

(Click here for the Romanian version)



(Pirosmani)

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Robert Doisneau - George Braque a Varengeville


Robert Doisneau, George Braque a Varengeville





In establishing the principle that a work of art should be autonomous and not merely imitate nature, Cubism redefined art in the twentieth century. Braque's large compositions incorporated the Cubist aim of representing the world as seen from a number of different viewpoints.
(Nicola Hodge and Libby Anson. The A-Z of Art)








George Braque, Round Table, Phillips Collection, Washington DC
(http://www.worldgallery.co.uk/art-print/The-Round-Table-25090.html)


The still life was his central preoccupation - here is a Braque that I saw at the Phillips Collection, in Washington. The title is Round Table, and it was made in 1927.



Georges Braque, Harbor, 1909
Washington DC, National Gallery of Art
Gift of Victoria Nebeker Coberly in memory of her son, John W. Mudd
(http://www.nga.gov/fcgi-bin/timage_f?object=74771ℑ=19642&c=)




The National Gallery in Washington has some more works of Braque. This harbor, dated 1909, looks fabulous. Look also at LE JOUR - also at the National Gallery, where it's neighboring the sculptures of Brancusi.



And here is a drawing, Aria de Bach, he made it in 1913.

Georges Braque, Aria de Bach, 1913
Washington DC, National Gallery of Art
Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon
(http://www.nga.gov/fcgi-bin/timage_f?object=61217ℑ=15363&c=)


Thursday, August 17, 2006

Robert Doisneau - Baiser Rue Mazarine

Robert Doisneau, Baiser Rue Mazarine













My first encounter with the world of Doisneau was a poster showing Le Baiser de l'Hotel de Ville. I found it in a very picturesque small town in Pennsylvania, in New Hope, where I used to go quite often some time ago. I found then other two Baisers, one is Le Baiser Rue Mazarine, the second shows the same couple, it's Le Baiser de l'Opera. The photos were shot in 1950. The guys should now have grand children and I hope they had fun ever since.


Robert Doisneau, Le Baiser de l'Opera, 1950














And another photo of Doisneau, the Foxterrier on the Pont des Arts.

Robert Doisneau, Foxterrier on  the Pont des Arts

Wednesday, August 16, 2006

The Bravo Blog

Shangai GrafittiJohnny Bravo served in the Marine for seven years. He grew all over the US, West/MidWest and Southeast. Most of his jobs were under the sun. College graduate and student of life. He moved to China where he got married. Works in IT.

Do I like China as much as my home country, no… I am an American, I served proudly to defend her rights and privileges to her citizens, I will always be an American.

What he likes about China? First and foremost, his wife and her parents, despite having married an American, and one who barely speaks Chinese, they have accepted and welcomed him into the family. He likes Chinese generosity, if you are a guest to someone’s home in China it is an experience that is unlike any other.

His favorite quote, those willing to sacrifice freedom for safety deserve and shall receive neither (Benjamin Franklin)

Here's the Bravo Blog.

Robert Doisneau - La Tour Eiffel

Robert Doisneau, La Tour Eiffel














(click here for the Romanian version)

What about this image of the Tour Eiffel, do you like it? And here are also some other images made by Robert Doisneau - pupils in a Parisian school in 1956 - it's full of warmth and nostalgia - and along with this photo there are other two - they show the ironic side of Doisneau - that wonderful Coco, and the so Parisian Side Glance (the discreet charme of the bourgeoisie, according to Bunuel).





Robert Doisneau, Paris, 1956





Robert Doisneau, Coco
Robert Doisneau, Side Glance