Federico

"Pensavo di non essere tagliato per la regia. Mi mancavano il gusto della sopraffazione tirannica, la coerenza, la pignoleria, la capacità di faticare e tante altre cose, ma soprattutto l’autorità. Tutte doti assenti nel mio temperamento. Da bambino ero un tipetto chiuso, solitario, aggredibile, vulnerabilissimo fino allo svenimento. E sono rimasto, checché ne pensi la gente, molto timido. Tutto questo come si poteva combinare con gli stivali, il megafono, l’urlata, le armi tradizionali del cinema? La regia di un film è sempre il comando sulla ciurma di Cristoforo Colombo che vuol tornare indietro."

Federico Fellini | January 20, 1920 — October 31, 1993

spooky action at a distance

"Using a variety of camera formats to affect perception and plane, Jan Groover creates complex, abstract spatial arrangements in her still-life, portrait, and landscape photography. Untitled #1308, a platinum/palladium print on luminous vellum-like paper, aptly demonstrates her craftsmanship in the darkroom with its finely-wrought delicacy. A painter by training, Groover makes reference to art history in her photographs, from Renaissance perspective drawings to Cezanne’s tabletops.

Groover was born in New Jersey in 1943. She received her BFA in 1965 from the Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, and her MA from Ohio State University in 1970. Her work has been the subject of one-person exhibitions at the Baltimore Museum of Art; Cleveland Museum of Art; the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; International Museum of Photography, George Eastman House, Rochester, New York; and Museum of Modern Art, New York. She is also the recipient of fellowships from The National Endowment for the Arts and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation."

taken from here : http://www.mocp.org/collections/permanent/groover_jan.php

"You will think I am self-opinionated"

Salman Rushdie perspective on her here :
http://artpunjab.deviantart.com/journal/Amrita-Sher-Gil-from-Salman-Rushdie-s-perspective-223563799

uncomplicated

A Poem of Unrest

A Poem of Unrest, by John Ashbery


November 05, 1995


Men duly understand the river of life,

misconstruing it, as it widens and its cities grow

dark and denser, always farther away.

****

And of course that remote denseness suits

us, as lambs and clover might have

if things had been built to order differently.

****

But since I don't understand myself, only segments

of myself that misunderstand each other, there's no

reason for you to want to, no way you could

****

even if we both wanted it. Do those towers even exist?

We must look at it that way, along those lines

so the thought can erect itself, like plywood battlements.

From "Can You Hear, Bird" by John Ashbery. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux: $20; 175 pp.) 1995 Reprinted by permission.

pictures you take...

"The portrait of the corpse also had its “pictorial” stage, in line with a general trend of fin-de-siècle photography, considered by Roland Barthes as an exaggeration of a prejudice that photography had about itself. And over time, the portrait of the deceased has virtually disappeared with the spreading of photography, since we all store abundant pictures of our living relatives."

This is true...and curious.

I found it here :
http://riowang.blogspot.com/2012/01/dead-bodies-frozen-light.html

Art is difficult

"Art is difficult," says the 66-year-old firmly. "It's not entertainment. There are only a few people who can say something about art – it's very restricted. When I see a new artist I give myself a lot of time to reflect and decide whether it's art or not. Buying art is not understanding art."
Anselm Kiefer talking to The Guardian

a burguesia, sim senhor

Adoro a burguesia e não me via a afirmar isto publicamente nos meus heróicos e idos anos 70...aliás até esse século já se foi, como não haveria eu de ser outro ?!
Voltando à afirmação inicial : adoro a burguesia, a das luzes, a que participou na grande revolução francesa, aquela que quer queiramos quer não, ajudou a criar a Europa tal como a idealizamos, mesmo a América dos nossos sonhos…
Como andamos hoje tão longe destes valores e desta presença de espirito. Voltaremos algum dia à Terra ou continuaremos nesta vida virtual onde nos mantém ?

between heaven and hell

"Basohli Paintings evolved in the 17th and 18th centuries as a distinctive style of painting fusing Hindu mythology, Mughal miniature techniques, and the folk art of the local hills. The painting style derives its name from the place of its origin—the hill town of Basohli. . . in the state of Jammu & Kashmir."
Vinayak Razdan

I found those here :
http://50watts.com/2300847/Fourteen-Basohli-Paintings

A secret bowl of silence

A secret bowl of silence



a word you left unsaid

a kiss you decided not to give

this you kept


a gentle pang in your chest

keeps you company through the nights

this you have


a dwindling light

this you are.

CLASSIFIEDS

CLASSIFIEDS

WHOEVER'S found out what location
compassion (heart's imagination)
can be contacted at these days,
is herewith urged to name the place;
and sing about it in full voice,
and dance like crazy and rejoice
beneath the frail birch that appears
to be upon the verge of tears.

I TEACH silence
in all languages
through intensive examination of:
the starry sky,
the Sinanthropus' jaws,
a grasshopper's hop,
an infant's fingernails,
plankton,
a snowflake.

I RESTORE lost love.
Act now! Special offer!
You lie on last year's grass
bathed in sunlight to the chin
while winds of summers past
caress your hair and seem
to lead you in a dance.
For further details, write: "Dream."

WANTED: someone to mourn
the elderly who die
alone in old folks' homes.
Applicants, don't send forms
or birth certificates.
All papers will be torn,
no receipts will be issued
at this or later dates.

FOR PROMISES made by my spouse,
who's tricked so many with his sweet
colors and fragrances and sounds -
dogs barking, guitars in the streets -
into believing that they still
might conquer loneliness and fright,
I cannot be responsible.
Mr. Day's widow, Mrs. Night.

~ Wislawa Szymborska ~


(Poems New and Collected 1957-1997,
trans. by S. Baranczak and C. Cavanagh)

a life in the shadow

the whole story here :
http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/January-2011/Vivian-Maier-Street-Photographer/

to find perfection

to find perfection you don't need to go far...just pay atention to all that's around you.

be like a lotus flower

"...like a lotus in a dirty pond, be in the world but not of it."

found in Aravind Adiga "Last man in tower"

The Apparent Is the Bridge to the Real

é um novo dia

é um novo dia,
é um novo ano,
é um novo começo,
outra oportunidade de fazermos bem
as coisas,
que acabarão feitas...bem ou mal, mal ou bem

é um novo dia.

Italia

um blog interessante :
http://www.progettoqd-home.blogspot.com/

old and wise

o exército português fez de mim um topógrafo (auxiliar)

There are no rules.

Helen Frankenthaler

December 12, 1928 – December 27, 2011