Thursday, July 31, 2014

Saturday, July 19, 2014



Pollock's painting and even more so the photos of him working changed the direction of art forever...




    Shiraga Kazuo, Challenging Mud, (1955)

     The 1st Gutai Art Exhibition broke new ground by staging actions that used the body as a medium. (Years before the body based performance art that became common in the 1960’s and 1970’s). One of the most interesting works in this vein was Shiraga  Kazuo’s Challenging Mud. During this performance, he made use of his entire body in all dimensions to “unconsciously express his existence in matter”. His own body replaced the traditional paintbrush and so the artist literally entered and turned into his work. The relics of this performance – a pile of mud, was left on view for the remainder of the exhibition as an artwork in it’s own right, expanding (perhaps for the first time) what could constitute a painting.

Friday, July 18, 2014

Konoe Fumimaro dressed as Adolf Hitler at a costume party in the spring of 1937, shortly before he was named Japan’s prime minister.



    Man Ray     Alice B. Toklas and Gertrude Stein in Their Home, Paris     1922

    "My wife and I had called on Miss Stein, and she and the friend who lived with her had been very cordial and friendly and we had loved the big studio with the great paintings. I t was like one of the best rooms in the finest museum except there was a big fireplace and it was warm and comfortable and they gave you good things to eat and tea and natural distilled liqueurs made from purple plums, yellow plums or wild raspberries.

    Miss Stein was very big but not tall and was heavily built like a peasant woman. She had beautiful eyes and a strong German-Jewish face that also could have been Friulano and she reminded me of a northern I talian peasant woman with her clothes, her mobile face and her lovely, thick, alive immigrant hair which she wore put up in the same way she had probably worn it in college. She talked all the time and at first it was about people and places.

    Her companion had a very pleasant voice, was small, very dark, with her hair cut like Joan of Arc in the Boutet de Monvel illustrations and had a very hooked nose. She was working on a piece of needlepoint when we first met them and she worked on this and saw to the food and drink and talked to my wife. She made one conversation and listened to two and often interrupted the one she was not making. Afterwards she explained to me that she always talked to the wives. The wives, my wife and I felt, were tolerated. But we liked Miss Stein and her friend, although the friend was frightening. The paintings and the cakes and the eau-de-vie were truly wonderful. They seemed to like us too and treated us as though we were very good, well-mannered and promising children and I felt that they forgave us for being in love and being married - time would fix that - and when my wife invited them to tea, they accepted.”  Ernest Hemingway, “A Moveable Feast,” published posthumously, 1964


Wednesday, July 16, 2014

Monday, July 14, 2014

Sunday, July 13, 2014

Friday, July 11, 2014

One of the saddest things is 
that the only thing a man can do 
for eight hours a day, 
day after day, is work. 
you can’t eat eight hours a day 
nor drink for eight hours a day 
nor make love for eight hours — 
all you can do for eight hours is work. 
which is the reason why man makes 
himself and everybody else 
so miserable and unhappy.
*
william faulkner 1947

Everyone has a photo like this


Words to live by

 Never presume that I will not act on my worst instincts. — Cesare Borgia

Jean Cocteau Painters Moïse Kisling (L) and Pablo Picasso (R) with Actress Pâquerette, Hanging Out at the Café de la Rotonde, Paris 1916



Convent porn


Timelapse of Wood Cut Millimeter by Millimeter Creates Waves that Ripple Like Water




Olive Oatman, a woman who was captured and enslaved by native americans who later sold them to the Mohave people that tattooed her face, 1857


Thursday, July 10, 2014

Am I?



Lejaren Hiller, Woman in Costume, ca. 1920

Anita Ekberg 1950s

Anna May Wong in Piccadilly  (Ewald Andre Dupont,  1929)


Desire




Beauty

Elie Nadelman, Tango, 1920–24. Painted cherry wood / Whitney Museum Nyc

Francis Crick:  Drawing of the double Helix, 1953

Judit Varga

Genius