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November 28, 2005
Arpad & Vieira
Vieira da Silva is probably my favourite Portuguese-born artist. There is a museum with her and Arpad Szenes' works near where I work. I sneaked there the other day on my lunch break to see a temporary photo exhibition. Special photos: portraits of artists on their studios. From Braque to Picasso, from Vieira to Miró.
I've been fascinated with Vieira and Arpad not only because of their brilliant paintings but also because of how I perceived their relationship; realizing how their respective works intertwined and by looking at photos of them together. I've seen photos dated from the 30's to the 80's. 55 years of living together and in all of the photos we can sense this marvelous cumplicity, like art was a special bond that made them inseparable companions.
As a Portuguese artist, Mario Cesariny, said: "Arpad Szenes e Vieira da Silva são a mais bela história de amor e pintura que jamais conheci" - "Arpad Szenes and Vieira da Silva are the most beautiful love and painting story I've ever known."
Posted by claudia Permalink
November 23, 2005
Kugelmass
"The Kugelmass Episode" is one of my favourite Woody Allen's short stories for two main reasons:
- he uses a fictional character crossover as a narrative device which is something rather common in film and tv but seldom used in literature;
- the idea of a magical machine that can transport me to the inside of a book sounds fascinating.
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"In Woody Allen’s New Yorker short story “The Kugelmass Episode,” collected in Side Effects (Allen 1982), Kugelmass is a professor of humanities at the City College of New York who, longing for some excitement in his middle-aged life and sick of the sensible advice offered him by his analyst, hooks up with a magician named The Great Persky. Persky has invented a machine that can insert living human beings into books: the client climbs into a coffin-like box and The Great Persky throws in a book of the client’s choice, whereupon the lid is closed and the client is magically transported into the chosen book.
Kugelmass chooses [Flaubert's] Madame Bovary, and appears in Emma’s bedroom at an auspicious period in between her affairs with Leon and Rodolphe(...). They have a steamy affair, and college students all over the country wonder who this bald Jew is, kissing Emma Bovary on page 100. " --- more here
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Emma couldn't hide her excitement at seeing him. The two spent hours together, laughing and talking about their different backgrounds. Before Kugelmass left, they made love. "My God, I'm doing it with Madame Bovary!" Kugelmass whispered to himself. "Me, who failed freshman English."
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So, if you're reading "Alice in Wonderland" and all of a sudden there's a thin brunette wearing glasses walking around, making small talk to the Mad Hatter and taking photos, that means I found the Great Persky :-)
Posted by claudia Permalink
November 21, 2005
Mr. Mojo Risin'
When I was 13 I decided to paint my bedroom walls bright red. I hanged a huge Jim Morrison b&w poster (the young lion photo series by Joel Brodsky, see below) by my bed. I bought every biography of his life I could get my hands on - which was not that easy seeing that we’re talking about Portugal in the 80’s!
More often than I care to admit, I have been made fun of by pseudo-intellectuals for having been a Jim Morrison fan as a teenager. I know it’s a bit pathetic for a 13/14 year old girl to lust after a dead, alcoholic, drug abusing rock star but the fact is that Mr. Morrison was such a great intellectual influence in my life.
I realized this the other day, while meditating about synchronicities, and mentally mapped some of the connections(click to enlarge):
(I've been having so much fun lately drawing mind maps)
I read so many, many books during this period which in one or other way were triggered by these references. I became an obsessive reader - like a chain smoker, I couldn't stop. Then I found boys…… Just kidding, it’s hard to distract me from my reading even today ;-)
(even later, as any true morrisonite, when I visited Paris I HAD to visit his grave at Père-Lachaise. And take a look at the building where he lived –and died - Rue Beautreillis, nr 17)
And none of this would have happened if it hadn't been for my very cool parents LP collection (Led Zeppelin, The Beatles, The Queen, The Doors, AC/DC, Cream,Yes, Moody Blues, Procol Harum, Leo Ferré, Jacques Brel, Serge Gainsbourg and many, many more).
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synchronicities, coincidences, etc. I went to see "The Constant Gardener" yesterday (fabulous movie). There was an intermission and as I was deep in thought about the brevity of life, how petty my own problems are compared to my other fellow human beings who are striving to survive, how my hapiness is sheer luck and all the thoughts one has on a particular sentimentally vulnerable day, when I suddenly realize that the theatre's background music is "L.A. Woman" by the Doors ;-)
Posted by claudia Permalink
November 04, 2005
Avoir l'apprenti dans le Soleil
Or how to make the viewer uncomfortable wit this total incoherence between the pictorial and the verbal image. The absence of the usual complementarity between image and written word leaves us perplex. The title, or signifier of meaning, and the object, the signified meaning, do not produce a sign, a way to understand.
Duchamp later explained that "To have the apprentice in the Sun" is the caption of a drawing that represents an ethical cyclist climbing a hill which is reduced to a line". He also said that art shouldn't just be visual. It should also increase or desire to think and understand. It carries us to the land of metaphors.
Posted by claudia Permalink