Thursday, August 13, 2009

Seres alados








Graciela Iturbide,

Grande fotógrafa mexicana.

Art in context




This interests me, click here please

Art pieces used to be comissioned to a specific place or function, usually not anymore, pieces are made to be seen in Museums and art galeries in very diferent contexts. Are we losing something ? Probably yes...

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Refuge



Artist/Maker
David Pell Secor (ca. 1824–1909)

Title/ObjectName
A Refuge from the Storm (Shadow from the Heat)

Medium
Pen and India ink on Bristol board

Dimensions
14 x 10 15/16 in. (35.6 x 27.8 cm)

Love city

Irony

I remember seing a Dubuffet exhibition and thinking, how he must have become fed up with what people expected from his art and then when he get really old, how he released himself of everything and fell in love with colour again, just like if he was a child again and starting over...








With his ironically cheerful imagery, Dubuffet lyricizes the material element, the small, neglected things of everyday life, the simple living of people, animals and nature.Thus, his paintings, in a way completely different from the later pop art artists who admired him, depict what is trivial. His art does not deride what is ordinary, but rather shapes the hidden poetry of everyday things into multifaceted image-compositions with multiple meanings.

The characteristic alternation in Jean Dubuffet’s painting between reality and dream, outer and inner experience, the ambiguity of his subjects corresponds to the position of this highly individual art situated between abstraction and representation.

everyday life



Some people, no matter their age, just look straight out of an old photo.
Other people you have to recheck them, because they seem oddly familiar, do I know you ? You ask with your glance...

One day you miss your morning train and a life changing event takes place. Your life changes, the event is not particularly aimed at you. But your life will never be the same.

You have one plot of land and you know everything that grows in there, every year you tend it, every year it rewards you. Not everything is bad, you leave your sweat there, sometimes you’re sick and tired, but when you pour the olive oil on your potatoes it feels like heaven and it’s worth everything.

Tuesday, August 11, 2009




"Into the inferno
Julian Loose

However prepared you are, the first time you descend into the Tokyo subway during the morning rush hour, it's still a shock. There's nothing frantic, disorderly or impolite when it comes to boarding a train. But the number of people stoically squeezing into each carriage is extraordinary: it's not a question of finding somewhere to stand where you won't step on your neighbours, you are simply thrust up against a flexible wall of silent, smartly dressed, odourless humanity.

Claustrophobic, certainly, but in the event it's an oddly comforting sensation. No one complains or sticks out an awkward elbow; everyone is accommodated, the doors slide shut, the train moves off. Before long, eyes closed, you, too, are drifting off to sleep, securely wedged upright within this rocking cradle - at least until the next stop. It is a very Japanese moment.

The notion that deliberate harm could befall anyone cocooned on such a train is profoundly disturbing. But on the morning of Monday 20 March 1995, five senior members of the Aum Shinrikyo cult board different trains, drop plastic bags to the floor and puncture them with the sharpened tips of their umbrellas. They leave. People in the carriage start to cough. Leaking out of the bags is sarin - the nerve gas that was invented by Nazi scientists and later used by Iraq against Iran and the Kurds. A drop of sarin the size of a pinhead is sufficient to kill a person: within a matter of hours, 12 Tokyo commuters and subway staff will be dead, and another 5,000 will be less seriously affected. "

Been reading this while comuting between home and work, a bit of masochism, I think, but at the same time being a fan of Murakami's, I think this is a decisive book to really understand his work.

Flow into me




Peace

Peace flows into me
As the tide to the pool by the shore;
It is mine forevermore,
It ebbs not back like the sea.

I am the pool of blue
That worships the vivid sky;
My hopes were heaven-high,
They are all fulfilled in you.

I am the pool of gold
When sunset burns and dies--
You are my deepening skies,
Give me your stars to hold.

Sara Teasdale

every rose is a miracle


Rosa Lapinha

Here in Portugal the miracle of the roses is attributed to our queen St. Isabel...

Aqui em Portugal a lenda atribui o milagre das rosas à rainha St. Isabel...

"The miracle of the roses is a Catholic miracle in which roses announce the presence or activity of God. Such a miracle is presented in various hagiographies and legends in different forms, and it occurs in connection with diverse characters such as St. Elisabeth of Hungary (1207-1231), St. Elizabeth of Portugal (1271-1336), and Our Lady of Guadalupe (appeared in 1531).

A symbol of love already in Greek and Roman literature, in the Middle Ages the rose became endowed with Christian symbolism. By the twelfth century, it has come to stand for the pleasures of the Garden of Eden and becomes associated with the Virgin Mary in her dual role as bride and mother; signaling the multivalence of Christian symbolism, the red rose by this time signifies the sorrow of Christ's passion, and martyrdom in general. It is in this period, the High Middle Ages, that the miracle of the rose appears in its different permutations, often as a female symbol, either because of the presence of the Virgin Mary or because the roses appear in the hands of a woman."

from the Wikipedia

Monday, August 10, 2009

St. Casilda de Toledo





- Roses, sire, they're only roses...

- São rosas, Senhor...

Life

love is an ocean...

Agony/ecstasy



"Teresa de Cepeda y Ahumada was born in 1515 in Gotarrendura, in the province of Ávila, Spain. Her paternal grandfather, Juan de Toledo, was a Jewish convert to Christianity and was condemned by the Spanish Inquisition for allegedly returning to the Jewish faith. Her father, Alonso Sánchez de Cepeda, bought a knighthood and successfully assimilated into Christian society. Teresa's mother, Beatriz, was especially keen to raise her daughter as a pious Christian. Teresa was fascinated by accounts of the lives of the saints, and ran away from home at age seven with her brother Rodrigo to find martyrdom among the Moors. Her uncle stopped them as he was returning to the city and spotted the two outside the city walls.

Leaving her father's home secretly at the age of 20, Teresa entered the convent of the Incarnation of the Carmelites outside Ávila. In the cloister, she suffered greatly from illness. Early in her sickness, she experienced periods of religious ecstasy through the use of the devotional book "Tercer abecedario espiritual," translated as the Third Spiritual Alphabet (published in 1527 and written by Francisco de Osuna). This work, following the example of similar writings of medieval mystics, consisted of directions for examinations of conscience and for spiritual self-concentration and inner contemplation (known in mystical nomenclature as oratio recollectionis or oratio mentalis). She also employed other mystical ascetic works such as the Tractatus de oratione et meditatione of Saint Peter of Alcantara, and perhaps many of those upon which Saint Ignatius of Loyola based his Spiritual Exercises and possibly the Spiritual Exercises themselves.


The Ecstasy of St Teresa in the basilica Santa Maria della Vittoria in Rome. By an Italian baroque artist, Gianlorenzo Bernini.She claimed that during her illness she rose from the lowest stage, "recollection", to the "devotions of silence" or even to the "devotions of ecstasy", which was one of perfect union with God. During this final stage, she said she frequently experienced a rich "blessing of tears." As the Catholic distinction between mortal and venial sin became clear to her, she says she came to understand the awful terror of sin and the inherent nature of original sin. She also became conscious of her own natural impotence in confronting sin, and the necessity of absolute subjection to God.

Around 1556, various friends suggested that her newfound knowledge was diabolical, not divine. She began to inflict various tortures and mortifications of the flesh upon herself. But her confessor, the Jesuit Saint Francis Borgia, reassured her of the divine inspiration of her thoughts. On St. Peter's Day in 1559, Teresa became firmly convinced that Jesus Christ presented himself to her in bodily form, though invisible. These visions of Jesus Christ lasted almost uninterrupted for more than two years. In another vision, a seraph drove the fiery point of a golden lance repeatedly through her heart, causing an ineffable spiritual-bodily pain.

“ I saw in his hand a long spear of gold, and at the iron's point there seemed to be a little fire. He appeared to me to be thrusting it at times into my heart, and to pierce my very entrails; when he drew it out, he seemed to draw them out also, and to leave me all on fire with a great love of God. The pain was so great, that it made me moan; and yet so surpassing was the sweetness of this excessive pain, that I could not wish to be rid of it... ”

Secular writers, such as Dan Brown, have described Teresa's description of events as a metaphor for sexual intercourse; the poster art for Theresa: The Body of Christ, a 2007 film by Ray Loriga, exemplifies this sexual interpretation. This vision was the inspiration for one of Bernini's most famous works, the Ecstasy of St Theresa at Santa Maria della Vittoria in Rome, which some art critics viewed as showing an erotic encounter.

The memory of this episode served as an inspiration throughout the rest of her life, and motivated her life-long imitation of the life and suffering of Jesus, epitomized in the motto usually associated with her: Lord, either let me suffer or let me die."
from the Wikipedia

Here in Portugal, it isn't usual to say that somebody died of cancer or even that somebody has cancer, instead we say something like : "X" has died of a long running disease or "Y" has a bad disease...and everybody would know that we are really talking about cancer.
So in a way the cancerous individual, has to live with an enemy he can't name. Like if its disease has some element of personal and social macula he has to hide.

Aqui em Portugal, os media dizem sempre que alguém morreu de doença prolongada e toda a gente sabe que foi de cancro. As pessoas entre elas, também raramente dizem cancro, dizem fulano morreu de ou fulano tem, uma doença má.
De alguma forma aos doentes de cancro é-lhes negado o direito de nomearem o seu inimigo. Como se a sua doença, para além do sofrimento fisico, implicasse também uma carga de opróbio moral e social.

Friday, August 7, 2009

Hiroshima










Nem só a carne é fraca...

Not only flesh is weak...

it all comes down to Bach

Universe



This is an universe.

I can't explain it, it can be simple
filed and classified for many, but I can't explain it.
It is a flower, an universe, it is dying at every moment
being reborn with each Spring.
It is an universe, I can't explain it.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Isto é um universo.

Não o consigo explicar, deve ser simples
estar catalogado e ordenado para muitos, mas eu,
eu não consigo explicá-lo.
É uma flor, é um universo, morre a cada instante
renasce a cada Primavera.
É um universo, não consigo explicá-lo.

Africa



Just touched Africa, not enough to form my own experience of it, yet heard lots of stories about it : how the heart smells after the rain, how beautiful the sunsets and how warm the people.
It's a place where ends meet, where our innate idea of Eden is closer to reality a place filled with wonderful creatures and breathtaking landscapes and at the same time hell on earth, deserts, refugee camps, famine and war.
Africa is our present, as much as it's sold as the past or the future.

Thursday, August 6, 2009

go emo!

"It’s dismissive. On that note, in terms of your statements on religion and pedagogy, how is it possible to allow religion to enter back into curricula if we are, as you say, in the winter phase of irony and satire? Can religion ever be taken seriously from a secular-humanist point of view?

Well, this is what’s wrong with education right now. It’s what’s wrong with post-structuralism. I don’t go in the direction of the cynical, looking for ways to question, to undercut, to dissolve meaning. As an Italian-American, as a very hot personality born under the sign of Aries, I’ve tried to drift things towards emotional extremes. That’s why I’ve been just ecstatic at my recent discovery of Brazil, where I’ve been going to give lectures. Last year I ended up in Salvadore de Bahia, which is heavily, eighty per cent, of African heritage. The emotional level of everybody there and the openness have taught me even more about the ills of Anglo-American society, where you have this inhibition of expressiveness. This is going to affect the performing arts. In live performance, you have to project to a theatre, as opposed to in a contemporary movie, in which you have to undercut, to downplay, or else it looks hammy. People have lost the ability to reach large numbers of people—in a free setting as they do in Brazil, not in a big-ticket arena. We really are entering a very bleak period.

Education should be about remedying whatever the needs are in society at a particular moment. So what do we need now? Emotion. I’ve seen in young people today a fear of being uncool, of making a fool of yourself. In the ’60s we had no problem making fools of ourselves. We were coming out of the ’50s, which was very repressive, uptight. That’s why the guys of my generation were influenced by black musicians; you can see in the film of Woodstock, young men trying to use their bodies in a very relaxed manner, in an almost feminine manner. They’re able to accept emotions: “Wow, far out,” etc. That was the period, and then it was gone. Men were wearing—look at Hendrix—feather boas, different colours, jewelry. Heterosexual men were wearing jewelry! Then all of a sudden it passed. Women went on to experiment with pants and everything, but the men lost it, all of that possibility. Then I began to notice something in the ’80s: whereas in the ’60s we would say, “wow,” “groovy,” or “far out,” young people began to say, “really?” I started hearing that [skeptical] tone. And I thought, “Oh no. We’re going back to the ’50s again. This is not good.”"

This is an excerpt from an interview Canadian magazine Walrus has done to Camille Paglia. I agree with her that we need to accept and express emotions better...
Read it all here

East meets West





Ralph Waldo Emerson

Poems

Brahma
If the red slayer think he slays,
Or if the slain think he is slain,
They know not well the subtle ways
I keep, and pass, and turn again.

Far or forgot to me is near,
Shadow and sunlight are the same,
The vanished gods to me appear,
And one to me are shame and fame.

They reckon ill who leave me out;
When me they fly, I am the wings;
I am the doubter and the doubt,
And I the hymn the Brahmin sings.

The strong gods pine for my abode,
And pine in vain the sacred Seven;
But thou, meek lover of the good!
Find me, and turn thy back on heaven.

1856 [1857]

Lisboa




Adoro Agosto em Lisboa...mesmo nos corredores do Metro, cheira a óleo de coco e passamos na rua por pessoas com sorrisos abertos.

Oh, I love to spend August in Lisbon...even in Subway corridors one can smell coconut oil and in the streets there's people with broad smiles.

Wednesday, August 5, 2009

a peek of Paris

Inherent vice



A trailer for a book, WOW !

Ciclismo

O homem que empurra o carro do entulho para a caixa do camião, usa um penso no nariz tal e qual o camisola amarela do Tour de France.
Empurra o carrinho com o mesmo sacrificio e garbo, com que o seu colega ciclista trepa os Alpes.
Com camisolas amarelas de um empreiteiro, passam num carro da EDP, dois jovens trabalhadores - porque andarão então num carro da EDP ? Porque saem mais baratos, são mais dóceis e facilmente descartáveis, é por isso...
Continuo a descer a calçada até à Avenida, passo o jardim deserto, nesta cidade de Sol, os habitantes preferem esconder-se nos seus cantinhos sombrios.
Na Avenida passam mulheres, tal e qual como os modelos das grandes montras, correm os carros apressados, aqui ninguém sua, ou mostra rugas de esforço, sequer usa um penso no nariz...Aqui na Avenida usar-se-ão máscaras, quando o medo da pandemia apertar, mas não por enquanto, não ainda.

Love me



"Love me" is a project by photojournalist Maisie Crow. With it she won the Ian Parry award.
Her photos are really worth a look, find them at her site.

Tuesday, August 4, 2009

See Emily play

the short XXth century



"Picabia adored women, cars, alcohol and drugs."












"Basically I’m a compulsive changer, like Picabia. You do something for six months or a year, and you move on to something else. That’s what Picabia has done all his life.” Marcel Duchamp, chess player

Calvin is cool !

Ceci n’est pas Magritte





"This période vache could not subsequently be transformed into a style. Barely a few weeks after the opening of the show, Magritte used the excuse of his wife’s supposedly negative reaction to bring the adventure to an end. “I would quite like to continue with the ‘approach’ I experimented with in Paris, and take it further. That’s my tendency: one of slow suicide. But there’s Georgette and my familiar disgust with being ‘sincere’. Georgette prefers the well-made painting of ‘yesteryear’, so particularly to please Georgette in future I’m going to show the painting of yesteryear. I’ll find a way to slip in a great big incongruity from time to time.”

Bernard Marcadé on René Magritte

More about this période ici

Monday, August 3, 2009

people lead complicated lives


Peter Severin Krøyer. 1899

Sommeraften ved Skagens strand. Kunstneren og hans hustru

Den Hirschsprungske Samling, København. 2004

Baladeur



balade
nom féminin
(de balader)
■Familier. Promenade : Faire une balade dans les bois.

ballade
nom féminin
(ancien provençal ballada, de ballar, danser)
■Au Moyen Âge, poème lyrique d'origine chorégraphique, d'abord chanté, puis destiné seulement à la récitation.
■À partir du XIVe s., poème à forme fixe, composé de trois strophes suivies d'un envoi d'une demi-strophe.
■Dès la fin du XVIIIe s., petit poème narratif en strophes, relatant, ordinairement sur le mode fantastique, une tradition historique ou une légende.
■Pièce vocale ou instrumentale inspirée par une ballade littéraire (Chopin, Liszt, Brahms ont écrit des ballades pour piano).

(merci Larousse.fr)

Espiritismo


Pai, mãe, Leah


Há muitos anos, era Portugal um país muito mais pobre do que é agora, mesmos os pobres tinham pessoas que os ajudavam nos seus trabalhos.
O meu avô Manuel na sua traineira, tinha sempre alguém com ele, normalmente um rapaz, mas também muitas vezes homens feitos já, que em troca do abrigo,do alimento e pouco mais, o ajudavam na sua faina da pesca.
Conta o meu pai, que um destes ajudantes já espigadote, tinha ganho o hábito de quando havia ajuntamentos, se deixar caír para o chão e começar a nadar em seco. Ele explicava depois que era o espirito de um irmão dele, que tinha morrido afogado e que naqueles momentos o possuía. O meu avô durante uma dessas possessões resolveu agarrar numa tábua e com ela dar umas pranchadas no possuído.
Segundo o meu pai foi cura instantânea e definitiva, visto que enquanto ele continuou com a minha familia nunca tal voltou a acontecer...
Penso é que o meu avô, ficou fã ferveroso da terapêutica, porque sempre que eu e os meus irmãos ficávamos com ele, arranjava umas varinhas de salgueiro e dava-nos com elas nas pernas, agora vejo, para nos livrar dos maus espiritos...
Diga-se também, que nós não éramos exactamente rapazes de parar quietos e com o rio ali mesmo ao lado, o meu avô devia pensar que era melhor andarmos sempre bem atentos e não nos pôrmos a pisar varas verdes.

Friday, July 17, 2009

the girl beyond the sun

there’s a girl beyond the sun with beautiful blue eyes
sitting in a star barefoot playing the guitar
singing very gently
there’s a girl that sings beyond the sun
sings very gently and we can’t hear her and we can’t see her
because she is beyond the sun
there’s a girl that’s hidden from us by the light beyond the sun
and she sings gently to us and her bare feet and her blue eyes long for the sea
one day by the sea maybe we all meet we and the little girl from beyond the sun
then we will all sing together and the whales will also join

a menina a seguir ao sol

tem uma menina a seguir ao sol de lindos olhos azuis e pés descalços sentada num astro toca guitarra e canta baixinho
tem uma menina que canta a seguir ao sol canta baixinho e não a ouvimos e não a vemos porque está a seguir ao sol
tem uma menina que a luz esconde de nós a seguir ao sol mas ela canta baixinho para nós e os seus pés descalços e o azul dos seus olhos esperam pelo mar
um dia no mar talvez nos encontremos nós e a menina de para lá do sol e cantaremos todos juntos e as baleias também

Be nice



1. Be nice
Simple enough advice, but we rarely think of it in terms of memories that linger after we're gone. No matter what you accomplish, how you treat people has a lot to do with how you will be remembered.

Even if you don't want to bother with how you're going to be remembered, being nice is always good for you and the environment !

more Bach



always strive for harmony

Revelation

A call to reality, is always a revelation.

Uma chamada à realidade, é sempre uma revelação.




On some June nights, young ones will burn the flowers of thistles, then hide them away hoping for them to bloom again, as a sure sign of reciprocate love.

Nas noites de Junho, os novos queimavam as flores dos cardos, escondiam-nos em seguida, esperando que a flor renascesse, provando assim que o seu amor era retribuido.

Thursday, July 16, 2009

busy life


detail of the lower left corner of Peter Brueghel the Elder's painting The Fight between Carnival and Lent or Carnival's Quarrel with Lent

People go about their ways, will always do, we just hope a little better each time...

As gentes vão e vêm, sempre o farão, só queremos que o façam sempre um pouco melhor a cada vez...

This one goes out to all the ones I love



For my generation there's nothing like the urgency of a great rock song - enjoy.

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Cities



Urban society may seem a modern phenomenon but cities have been around for a lot longer than one might think. Indeed, once nomadic tribes began to settle in one location, they saw that it was good, became fruitful, and multiplied. Decades, centuries and millennia passed while war, climate change and human migration all took their toll. Relatively few ancient cities have managed to survive the test of time. Here are 10 that have not only survived, but continue to thrive.

It is true : cities promote civilization, but over 300.000 inhabitants sustainability becomes an issue...

Contratenor

Sonho


"Encarnação Baptista, Desenhos e pinturas. Registos imprevistos para um traje imaginário", Museu Nacional do Traje, Julho-Outubro 1997

Parece uma criatura saída de um sonho - um sonho bom.

Looks like a creature out of a dream - a good dream.

Noticiário

Ontem enquanto via as noticias na televisão, este filme foi apresentado como noticia.
Belo mundo este em que uma bela jovem, é destaque noticioso apenas por ser bela. Ainda por cima filmado em tel-Aviv pacata cidade do mar Mediterrâneo, como são belas as aparências, como tudo corre bem se planarmos sobre o mundo como um esquiador sobre o mar.

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

a little Bach

Zeitgeist

Corre-se e corre-se, ficando sempre no mesmo sítio. Existe uma nuvem, feita de nós todos, gotas de água, explodindo em todas as cores quando o sol nos atravessa.

You run and you run, but you always stay in the same place. There is a cloud, made up of all of us, little drops of water, it explodes in every colour when sunlight goes through us.