Klimt, Bethan Laura Wood

Medizin (1897)

Bethan Laura Wood

Sexy danger: Siren, Angel

Funerary siren, Louvre (I Century bC)

Adriana Lima at a Victoria's Secret show (2008)

Taken from "On Chesil Beach", by Ian McEwan

 Right!

"She adored his curious mind, his mild country accent, the huge strength in his hands, the unpredictable swerves and drifts of his conversation, his kindness to her, and the way his soft brown eyes, resting on her when she spoke, made her feel enveloped in a friendly cloud of love."

Leonard Freed, Enrique G de la G

 Leonard Freed, Waiting at the airport, Amsterdam (1964)

Enrique G de la G, After the fair (2008)

– the story behind this pic –

Olafur Eliasson, Fulldome

Olafur Eliasson, Berlin Colour Sphere (2007)

B3, Fulldome (2013)

Intelligentsia: Brassaï, Rogelio Cuéllar

Standing: Jacques Lacan, Cécile Éluard, Pierre Reverdy, Louise Leiris, Zanie de Campan, Pablo Picasso, Valentine Hugo, Simone de Beauvoir.

On the floor: Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Michel Leiris, Jean Aubier.

Brassaï, Paris (1943)

Standing: Tomás Segovia, Gabriel Zaid, Marie-Jose Paz, Alejandro Rossi, José de la Colina, Salvador Elizondo.

On the floor: Octavio Paz, Juan García Ponce, Michelle Albán, Kazuya Sakai.

Rogelio Cuéllar, Mexico City (1975)

Robert Capa: 100th anniversary

One hundred years ago, Robert Capa was born.

Don't look back: Wyeth, Richter

"But Lot’s wife looked back, and she became a pillar of salt."

Genesis 19:26

Andrew Wyeth, Christina's world (1948)

Gerhard Richter, Betty (1988)

Art in the street: Joshua Bell, Banksy

Washington subway (2007)

New York City's Central Park (2013)

Hands: A history of love

A royal hand, New Kingdom, Dynasty 18, reign of Akhenaten (ca. 1349–1336 bC)

Michelangelo, Creation of Adam (1511-1512)

Rudolf Bonvie, Dialog 2 (1973)

Rudolf Bonvie, Dialog 13 (1973)

Hands of Nefertiti and Akhenaten, New Kingdom, Dynasty 18, reign of Akhenaten (ca. 1350 bC).

Shadows: Camels, Cyclists

George Steinmetz (2005)

Sebastian Boue (2013)

3D printed gun bought by a museum

There has been much uproar –obviously– because of the American guy who 3D-printed a gun and uploaded the design to the internet. There was even an interesting docu film made by Vice.

Now, the Victoria & Albert Museum bought it. Even more uproar. (Look at the aesthetics of the pic!)

The paradox was pointed out by Jonathan Jones:

"What this gun really shows is the human propensity to make the worst of its own intellectual power. Within a few years of the Wright brothers making human flight a reality, war planes took to the air. As soon as nuclear fission was achieved, it was used to destroy cities. Now, as soon as 3D printing opens up a new age of design, it is used to preach the might of the gun."

Marylinne Robinson dixit

I am afraid I had never reflected upon the etymology of the word "novel", until now, when Marylinne Robinson draw my attention to it thanks to an interview:

"A novel by its nature is new."

Floating: Ophelia, Neil Armstrong

 John Everett Millais, Ophelia (1851-1852)

 Paul Fryer, Ophelia (2007)

 Neil Armstrong (1967)

Architecture: Roof triangles

Hans Sharoun, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin (1978)

 David Chipperfield, Museo de la Colección Jumex (2013)

Vivian Maier's 8mm films

The photographic wonder Vivian Maier shot also 8mm films! This is the first one I just saw.

And please notice how obesity was unknown few decades ago.

Kate Moss Christ

It seems that girly Christs have become a trend. Now, photographer Nick Knight presented a sculpture of Kate Moss... as winged Christ: with thorn crown and loincloth.

"En puntas", by Javier Pérez

A few months ago I posted a sharp picture by Javier Pérez: a girl crucified on knives.

He now published a short version of a longer clip: a ballerina dancing on knives. 

Beautiful mess

Patternity is doubtless my favorite and most inspiring, from an aesthetical point of view, page on the web. It is intriguing, challenging, sweet, subtile and mind blowing. It helps to understand beauty from a pattern point of view. Now, even trash or mess can look really beautiful, if you look smartly.

"Manifestation", with Rosie Huntington-Whiteley

Nothing compares to a nice female body: Paris vs. Malibu.

Keine Zeit fürs Internet

This is the story of a 26-year old German girl who has never been online and has no interest in doing so. I thought I was a maverick since I do not use cell phones, but am just amateurish...

Published yesterday on the FAS.

Jesse Prinz dixit

"Popular taste tends to be sentimental, saccharine, and overly concerned with prettiness".
Really Bad Taste, p.97

Harry Graf Kessler on revolution and violence

Last year I became an admirer of Harry Graf Kessler, the brilliant diarist, cosmopolitan leftist bohème. I am now reading his Berlin diaries, and cannot help myself but underlining almost every passage – it is such an outburst of perspicacity and brilliant observation.

This selection of diaries start with the Novemberrevolution of 1918 and the fall of the German Empire and ends with Kessler's death in 1937.

Since it is impossible to make a selection of phrases, I prefer to refer just to the last I have read so far regarding revolutions and use of violence, being it so actual for nowadays.

Sunday, 19 January 1919 – Berlin

Shooting is the worker's least effective weapon, amateurish and out-of-date, revolution in a romantic wrapper. [...]

Perhaps that gives a hint as to how wars, through the growth of more effective forms of pressure, will come to be eliminated from the international scene. One day mass slaughter and artillery barrages will seem just as simple-minded and old-fashioned in conflicts between nations ans machine-guns do in class warfare. Economics, not military superiority, decided the [I] World War. It can be objected that economic agencies must within certain limits bow to military sanctions when the latter is capable of being forced on them. The blockade, for instance, was a military means of coercion in the defeat of Germany. Nonetheless, it remains an open question whether in modern conditions military coercion would achieve its object for long in the face of united opposition inside a plant or inside a country.

Nabokov on authentic literary creation

Berlin trolley at Unter den Linden (1920s)

In 1976, The New Yorker published "A Guide to Berlin", written fifty years before by V. Nabokov in Russian.

As he is reflecting upon horse-drawn trams and motorized trolleys (whose extinction he falsely predicted), Nabokov writes about the authentic sense of literary creation: "to portray ordinary objects as they will be reflected in the kindly mirrors of future times; to find in the objects around us the fragrant tenderness that only posterity will discern and appreciate in the far-off times when every trifle of our plain everyday life will become exquisite and festive in its own right".

Think of Homer, of Caesar, of Dante, think of Shakespeare and Cervantes and Hugo... It fits perfectly. Now think of all those authors of our time writing bullshit –mostly in affected, cheesy Spanish– and wasting our time and trees and paper and ink and butt.

Read the whole passage, it is truly brilliant:

Long live the tram! Long live Nabokov! Long live REAL literature, threatened by fame and "the market"!

Ghislain Dussart's female Christs

Ghislain Dussart aka Jicky Dussart was a French photographer, best know because of his portraits of Brigitte Bardot.

He also has a collection of collages depicting female Christs, which is worth checking.

Kafka dixit

"Berlin tut mir von allen Seiten gut."

Mir erst, lieber Kafka!

No maybes: Cartier-Bresson, Marlboro

Henri Cartier-Bresson, Bankers Trust, NY (1960)

In a recently discovered and published interview, Cartier-Bresson said:

But as for me, I enjoy shooting a picture. Being present. It’s a way of saying, “Yes! Yes! Yes!” It’s like the last three words of Joyce’s “Ulysses,” which is one of the most tremendous works which have ever been written. It’s “Yes, yes, yes.” And photography is like that. It’s yes, yes, yes. And there are no maybes. All the maybes should go to the trash, because it’s an instant, it’s a moment, it’s there! And it’s respect of it and tremendous enjoyment to say, “Yes!” Even if it’s something you hate. Yes! It’s an affirmation.

The quote resembles the Maybe campaign launched last year by Marlboro. Cigarettes and tobacco are awful, but the campaign is indeed fab! I saw some ads this weekend at the Melt! Festival.

Szymon Laks

Szymon Laks was a Polish born, Paris-based musician, who got caught by the Gestapo. He eventually became the director of the orchestra in Auschwitz. A Jew, he survived the II World War, and published a book about his musical experience at the concentration camp. He kept writing both music and literature, until Israel attacked Egypt in 1973 in the so called Six Days War. He could not understand that Israelis (or Jews) could start a war after the Shoah. He believed in peace and in the power of writing. So he stopped writing music and concentrated on his literary works.

Last week was launched the Master Revival Series, a Polish project regarding forgotten Jew composers from Poland who were imprisoned or killed by Nazis. Szymon Laks' is the first episode. It constitutes a magnificent piece of memory and culture and human heritage beyond races or nationalities. It is worth watching and listening to his son, Prof. André Laks, recalling his paternal figure.

First depiction of (naked) native Americans

When were the indigenous people from the Americas first depicted?

I remembered the controversy recently while visiting the Royal Alcazars of Seville. According to the information offered to the visitors, the first one is to be found in Alejo Fernández famous Virgen de los mareantes, right under her right arm.

But Jonathan Jones has pointed out recently that there is an older one to be found in Amerigo Vespucci's first voyage letter to Piero di Tommaso Sonderini, published in Florence in 1505. Jones has even written a book telling more details about the mean means of Vespucci in order to get what he wanted.

Anyways. A few months ago, the Vatican revealed a fresco by Pinturicchio from 1494, where a few Native Americans are shown naked, right under Christs right foot.