October 25, 2010
October 13, 2010
October 12, 2010
There's More To Life Than This
-Arthur Cravan, “Words”
October 11, 2010
"...To Make People Believe What?"
How simple we seem, or at least pretend to be in front of others, and how twisted we are deep down.
How paltry we are and how spectacularly we contort ourselves before our own eyes,
and the eyes of others…
And all for what?
To hide what?
To make people believe what?”
-Roberto Bolaño
Fragile Things
You think you know all there is to know about her immediately upon meeting her, but everything you think you know is wrong.
Passion flows through her like a river of blood.
She only looked away for a moment, and the mask slipped, and you fell.
All your tomorrows start here."
- Neil Gaiman, "Fragile Things"
October 10, 2010
"...Reach us through the flesh."
"Surreal State" By Mert Marcus
Kristamas Klousch+by+G%C3%BCnter+Blum,+1993.jpg)
"The Corset That Stings (Das Stachelkorsett)" by Günter Blum, 1993
"Chains" by Ralph Gibson
Günter Blum
October 8, 2010
October 6, 2010
October 4, 2010
Dora Maar
Pablo Picasso's muse and lover...
Dora Maar by Man Ray. (1936).
"Before meeting Picasso, Maar was already famous as a photographer. She also painted. She met Picasso in January 1936 on the terrace of the Café les Deux Magots in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Paris, when she was 29 years old and he 54. The famous poet Paul Éluard, who was with Picasso, had to introduce them. Picasso was attracted by her beauty and self-mutilation (she cut her fingers and the table playing "the knife game"; he got her bloody gloves and exhibited them on a shelf in his apartment). She spoke Spanish fluently, so Picasso was even more fascinated. Their relationship lasted nearly nine years.
Maar became the rival of Picasso's blonde mistress, Marie-Thérèse Walter, who had a newborn daughter with Picasso, named Maya. Picasso often painted beautiful, sad Dora, who suffered because she was sterile, and called her his "private muse." For him she was the "woman in tears" in many aspects. During their love affair, she suffered from his moods, and hated that in 1943 he had found a new lover, Françoise Gilot. Picasso and Paul Éluard sent Dora to their friend, the psychiatrist Jacques Lacan, who treated her with psychoanalysis.
She made herself better known in the art world with her photographs of the successive stages of the completion of Guernica, which Picasso painted in his workshop on the rue des Grands Augustins, and other photographic portraits of Picasso. Together, she and Picasso studied printing with Man Ray."
Portrait of Pablo Picasso.
"Untitled" (1934).
"Pere Ubu" (1936).
"Silence" (1935).
"Jeux Interdits" (1935).
"Empreintes de pieds sur le sable" (1931).
"Baigneuse" (1931).
"29. Rue d'Astorg" (1937).
"Untitled" (c. 1940).
"Before meeting Picasso, Maar was already famous as a photographer. She also painted. She met Picasso in January 1936 on the terrace of the Café les Deux Magots in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Paris, when she was 29 years old and he 54. The famous poet Paul Éluard, who was with Picasso, had to introduce them. Picasso was attracted by her beauty and self-mutilation (she cut her fingers and the table playing "the knife game"; he got her bloody gloves and exhibited them on a shelf in his apartment). She spoke Spanish fluently, so Picasso was even more fascinated. Their relationship lasted nearly nine years.
Maar became the rival of Picasso's blonde mistress, Marie-Thérèse Walter, who had a newborn daughter with Picasso, named Maya. Picasso often painted beautiful, sad Dora, who suffered because she was sterile, and called her his "private muse." For him she was the "woman in tears" in many aspects. During their love affair, she suffered from his moods, and hated that in 1943 he had found a new lover, Françoise Gilot. Picasso and Paul Éluard sent Dora to their friend, the psychiatrist Jacques Lacan, who treated her with psychoanalysis.
She made herself better known in the art world with her photographs of the successive stages of the completion of Guernica, which Picasso painted in his workshop on the rue des Grands Augustins, and other photographic portraits of Picasso. Together, she and Picasso studied printing with Man Ray."
Portrait of Pablo Picasso.
"Untitled" (1934).
"Pere Ubu" (1936).
"Silence" (1935).
"Jeux Interdits" (1935).
"Empreintes de pieds sur le sable" (1931).
"Baigneuse" (1931).
"29. Rue d'Astorg" (1937).
"Untitled" (c. 1940).Judith with the head of Holofernes
In the apocryphal Book of Judith, the Jewish heroine enters the tent of the Assyrian general Holofernes, seduces him, gets him drunk and chops off his head.
Cranach's Judith is a court beauty with pink cheeks, an almost Mona Lisa enigma to her expression, flowing golden locks and white cleavage visible beneath three rich necklaces. Her rakishly angled velvet hat and tight bodice make her the height of fashion - except that in one of her white-gloved hands she holds a wide-bladed sword aloft, and lifts a handkerchief to expose Holofernes's severed head.
The warrior's head is bearded and its dead eyes roll: the muscles and tubes in his neck are opened for our inspection in a red mass. Judith takes all this in her stride. The red, yellow and white hues of her skin, hair and clothes are unblemished, her richly textured sleeves unruffled - even her sword is clean of blood. It's as if she is acting out the part of the seducer-assassin in some courtly entertainment.
It's a far cry from earlier images of Judith that went out of their way to deny the story's sexual content. Donatello's 15th-century sculpture of Judith gives her a hood, robes and a narrow collar, so that almost no flesh is visible. Botticelli's painting from the 1470s has her dreamily pure as she walks home, sword in hand, a servant carrying the head.
These virtuous Judiths clearly gave nothing of themselves and took no pleasure in Holofernes's tent. Cranach's Judith is more paradoxical; the very clothes that had been introduced into the iconography to stress her chastity become sexually charged as she exposes the gory head to the shocked but fascinated viewer.
October 3, 2010
Sir Joshua Reynolds (Part 2)
Mrs. Siddons as the Tragic Muse. (1789)
Cupid Undoing Venus's Belt. (1788)
Venus. (1785)
Cupid as a Link Boy. (1773)Sir Joshua Reynolds (Part 1)
Jane, Countess of Harrington. (1778)
Mrs. Baldwin. (1782)
Charles Coote, 1st Earl of Bellamont. (1773)
Charles Lennox, 3rd Duke of Richmond. (1758)
Mrs. Abington. (1764-73)
The Ladies Waldegrave. (1780-81)October 2, 2010
Bjork - AnOther Magazine
Bjork on the cover of AnOther Magazine by Inez & Vinoodh
Fall/Winter 2010/2011
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