Friday, August 21, 2009

Limits




Quem nos Ama não Menos nos Limita

Não só quem nos odeia ou nos inveja
Nos limita e oprime; quem nos ama
Não menos nos limita.
Que os deuses me concedam que, despido

De afetos, tenha a fria liberdade
Dos píncaros sem nada.
Quem quer pouco, tem tudo; quem quer nada
É livre; quem não tem, e não deseja,

Homem, é igual aos deuses.

Ricardo Reis, in "Odes"
Heterónimo de Fernando Pessoa

giant steps




Fairy Child




I'd Love to be a Fairy's Child
by Robert Graves

Children born of fairy stock
Never need for shirt or frock,
Never want for food or fire,
Always get their heart’s desire:
Jingle pockets full of gold,
Marry when they’re seven years old.
Every fairy child may keep
Two strong ponies and ten sheep;
All have houses, each his own,
Built of brick or granite stone;
They live on cherries, they run wild—
I’d love to be a Fairy’s child.

Stillness




Moments are nothing, only stillness matters

Os instantes não contam, apenas vale o que permanece

quiet laughter


Fragment of Juan Muñoz' series of sculptures "Thirteen Laughing at Each Other" (2001), Jardim da Cordoaria, Porto, Portugal

You feel like sitting under the trees and join your laughing companions, it's nice in the shade and after a moment you start to enjoy, this odd, happy company...
They're simple, quiet fellows, in spite of their broad laughing mouths, your can hear your own thoughts and start to appreciate them.

MittelEuropa(2)



Praga, Budapeste, Varsóvia todas arrancadas ao Ocidente, felizmente de volta ao seu lugar histórico.

Prague, Budapest, Warsow all thorn out from the Ocident, hopefully now back to their historic destiny.

Thursday, August 20, 2009

MittelEuropa




Poets don’t invent poems
The poem is somewhere behind
It’s been there for a long time
The poet merely discovers it.

Jan Skacel

Vorticism



Vorticism...the XXth century started with a great fascination with speed and machinery...things went terribly bad and here we are - will we be more lucky this time ?
So many brilliant lives gone to waste.

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Heaven of delight











MA: How do you delegate work in colossal endeavors of the order of Castle Tivoli (1990) or Heaven of Delight (2002), your recent ceiling for the Hall of Mirrors of the Royal Palace in Brussels?

JF: Castle Tivoli was a drawing/sculpture and a sculpture/drawing that you could penetrate or walk around—it was a vibrating piece of drawn sculpture. In my work, I have sought to achieve the independence of drawing as a self-sufficient medium. I want to rid drawing of its personal signature. What better to achieve this than by creating a colossal drawing—a large energy field—with 30 assistants in which the hand of the artist becomes irrelevant. Castle Tivoli raises questions as to what exactly is a drawing and what exactly is a sculpture. It was the culmination of that particular period in my career. I was involved with Heaven of Delight for three years, although actual work on the ceiling took three months. This sculpture/drawing comprises 1.4 million jewel beetle shells. My first drawings in blue ballpoint were created by following insects on paper—the splitting of space. Next, I proceeded to replace the ballpoint line by the insect itself. The shimmering ceiling at the Royal Palace is the apotheosis of my development involving the beetles. That is why I am currently conducting research on the body, that strange laboratory we wake up with every morning.

My work is concerned with the release and the absorption of energy, with electricity. I still do a lot myself. I register energy, time, and intensity. I am interested in the act of making. I could have drawn over a photograph of that castle in Mechelen, but instead I chose to cover the entire castle with blue ballpoint. The process of making, or letting others make, gives me tremendous pleasure. I cannot get away from that—I love that physical experience. My nerves cannot be tamed.

As far as the ceiling is concerned, I first created a wide variety of forms and patterns by gluing beetles onto small surfaces. Then I told my 29 assistants that they could start inventing forms, knowing full well what they would come up with. This process allowed me to discover who was good at what type of pattern. Once I had this information, I could assign different areas of the ceiling to different assistants. Those thousands and thousands of beetles form drawings within the larger drawing, as in my large ballpoint drawings. My sculpture seeks to conquer space.

MA: Where do you get thousands and thousands of beetles?

JF: I obtain the scarabs from universities I have connections with and through the open market. The Sternocera acquisignata used in the Royal Palace is a non-protected species that appears abundantly in certain countries. In Thailand, the beetle is fried for consumption and its shell is discarded.

MA: Your work can look extremely delicate. Is it ephemeral?


JF: I use strong materials, which happen to have a fragile appearance. The color of those beetle shells will never fade, for the outer integument contains chitin, one of the strongest and lightest materials on earth, which was used for objects destined for the Mir space station. Scientists are once more studying the world of insects. I love the durability of things. I create for the future. I believe that my work contains many riddles and layers, which will reveal themselves more clearly to the beholder in, say, 50 or 100 years. Only then will my work be better understood. I find it such a beautiful thought: we live in a society where no one is concerned with durability, while artists are precisely engaged with issues of durability. Durability is a rather old-fashioned concept. You are no longer allowed to believe that your work will have value in, say, 100 years. I believe, on the contrary, that its significance will increase. I would stop making art if I believed that my work could hold no future meaning.
Michaël Amy is a frequent contributor to Art in America, tema celeste, Sculpture, and The New York Sun.

People


Clint Eastwood as Walt Kowalski in Gran Torino

"São precisas várias vidas para fazer uma só pessoa"

"It takes several lives to make a single person"

Carlos Fuentes

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Eleições no Outono



Vêmo-los na rua. Vêmo-los na TV.
Podemos até votar num neste Outono.
Pensamos que são pessoas como nós.

Mas estamos enganados. Mortalmente enganados.

(Se pensam que é brincadeira, leiam isto)

The end



"...Mas se o homem perdeu a necessidade de poesia, será que se apercebe do seu desaparecimento ? O fim, não é uma explosão apocalíptica. Talvez não haja nada de mais tranquilo que o fim."

Milan Kundera - A arte do Romance

"...But if man lost all his need for poetry, will he be aware of his own doom ? The end is not an apocalyptic explosion. There may be nothing so quiet as the end.”

Milan Kundera – The Art of the Novel

Peace. Health. Love.



Not blessed by faith, no.
Still immaterial forces drive me, on many ways that I can explain.

Não fui abençoado pela fé.
Contudo, forças imateriais tem um papel na minha vida, maior do que alguma vez conseguirei explicar.

Color







A turning point in Klee's career was his visit to Tunisia with August Macke and Louis Molliet in 1914. He was so overwhelmed by the intense light there that he wrote: "Color has taken possession of me; no longer do I have to chase after it, I know that it has hold of me forever. That is the significance of this blessed moment. Color and I are one. I am a painter".

Monday, August 17, 2009

soundtrack



I run and I run and it's all dark and I'm scared inside my head, I have an itch on the base of my head and I run faster... I run and I run till I pass the gates and I'm safe again.
Tomorrow I will come running again.

world chest



O meu peito nunca foi tão grande, os dias nunca mais foram tão brilhantes e a fruta tão doce...
Espero o dia em que tudo recomece e sejam vossos os peitos imensos.

My chest was never so big, light of day never so bright and the fruits never so sweet...
I long for the day that it all begins again and bigger will be your chests.

‘Dido and Aeneas’






Dido, also called Elissa, was princess of Tyre in Phoenicia. Escaping tyranny in her country, she came to Libya where she founded Carthage, a great city which Aeneas and his comrades, who had become refugees after the sack of Troy, visited seven years after the end of the Trojan War. As Queen of Carthage, she received the Trojans exiles with hospitality, and having given Aeneas more love than he could take, felt betrayed when he left for Italy, and committed suicide.

Gloria



il Prete Rosso

Flora



Tell me I'm alive