let's turn Manhattan into an island of joy

It was about time I posted some more Ella...

two shops

There’s this street, near my job with two shops I love :
one sells books - some music on cd and films on dvd, too
Facing it, the other shop sells flowers.
(I quite don’t know which one I like better.)

Well, in this bookshop, you are free to browse the books,
People are friendly and nice, you can sit awhile there
listen to some music, even have a coffee…
No strings attached, it’s urban and modern, civil.
The florist, I just peer at, from the outside,
They left the woodwork of the building to show
painted it in pastel colors, everything seems so nice,
out of place in the middle of the city, like in a dream
also they don’t keep the usual flowers, florists use to have here :
industrial roses, look alike gerberias, colored clones all…
They have wild flowers, a variety of tree leafs and much greenery
you think of the countryside, of things tamed and wild
but mostly good.
(I think I like this shop better.)

power and poise

I guess that with great power comes poise. You have to give great speeches, to motivate a nation, sometimes you even try to be global, to address the whole World.
You may be a Nobel prize winner, but you still have to lead the businesses of war - the business of war. It comes with the territory, this power was given you for the general good, and for the general good you deploy troops, you set a date for the coming home, the only outcome possible : a victory - because that will be the common good.
And you keep your poise.

Guess we all should keep our poise, because we are entitled to have a say in defining the common good. We decide if we still allow places where women aren't citizens and girls can't go to school, we decide if we still allow places where they can maim you, because you steal, or kill you in a barbaric fashion because you're accused of adultery.
We decide if we should consider great powers, nations where people aren’t free to voice their opinions, we decide the millions who starve, the millions who don’t have homes, because everything we do contributes to that. Our leaders decide that, they decide how materials are valued, how skills are paid or they chose to let others decide that for them, all of us decide to believe in immaterial things : the market, the market laws, the deficits, the black swans.
We should all keep our poise. We decide what’s the common good. We deploy the troops. We even are the humans in the field.

Go to Frankfurt

A true feast : Boticelli

why do some artists make the canon and others don't ?

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In 1887 Frantisek Kupka began training as an artist at the Prague academy under Frantisek Sequens, who had been strongly influenced by the Nazarener School. In 1891 the artist transfered to the academy in Vienna, where he worked under Professor Eisenmenger until 1893. In 1894 Kupka travelled to London and Skandinavia, after which he settled in Paris in 1895. Just like Lyonel Feininger and Marcel Duchamp, Kupka started off as caricaturist and drawer. He made fashion designs, drafts for posters, illustrations for books and various satirical magazines. In 1905 Kupka moved to Puteaux in the suburbs, where he got acquainted with Jacques Villon, who introduced him to a circle of painters in 1910/11,including Marcel Duchamp, Robert Delaunay, Fernand Léger, Francis Picabia and others. They discussed the problems of form encountered by Cubism and Futurism as well as the connections between painting and music. Kupka's works underwent a decisive development: He became the first artist in France to move from Jugendstil to Abstraction. The acceptance of the ornament as an independent element of Jugendstil lead him to the final abandonment of the natural form. The group around Villon, who called themselves 'Section d'Or', had their first exhibition at the Paris autumn salon in 1912. Kupka exhibited his abstract pictures here, which are associated with Orphism because of their proximity to music. In 1914 he voluntarily enrolled for front-line duty at the Somme. In 1918 Frantisek Kupka accepted a post as guest professor in Prague and in 1931 he co-founded the group 'Abstraction-Création' with Hans Arp, Jean Hélion, Auguste Herbin, Georges Valmier and Georges Vantongerloo, becoming a member of the group's board. This time was also marked by important exhibitions at the 'Jeu de Paume' museum in Paris. Franisek Kupka spent the Second World War in Beaugency, returning to Puteaux immediately after the liberation. In 1946 at the occasion of his 75th birthday the artist's first major retrospective was shown in Prague. In 1955 Kupka participated in documenta I in Kassel. Kupka died in Puteaux on July 21, 1957. A year later a large-scale retrospective exhibition took place at the 'Musée d'Art Moderne' in Paris, which dedicated an entire room to Frantisek Kupka.

Things change

El Perro Semi-Hundido (1820),
Goya

Things change, things change all the time
Unnoticed, unannounced change comes to you
That’s the nature of things.

You enter this room, there’s a very bright light, white walls
A nice gentleman greets you gently, invites you to have a sit
You both go over images of the inside of your body, he’ll explain things to you
Everything will be fine. Everything always works out fine in the end.
Just you be reasonable – things change,
Just you accept it.

and now for something completely diferent...

READ THIS

young madonna at the train station

You come into the station's waiting room
with a gust of wind and a daze of water,
sit quietly by the door, you took your time to compose yourself
then and only then you lift your head, you screened the room...
Oh, it was only me, plus two old ladies on the other corner,
no one that might interest you,
your gaze turned inside, inside just like that.

Oh, but I couldn't resist admiring you for a while,
you with the most perfect lips, reminding me of strawberries
now that is high Winter, a feeling of the ripeness of Summer
Oh, I envy the one who is going to drink from those perfect lips,
Young Madonna.