tiDOilLA'!

Circus: the picture show /2 (you'd better be strong)

2012-01-07T09:49:00.000-08:00

The funeral of the North Korean leader Kim Jong Il unfolded last Dec 28 2011 in a snow-laden Pyongyang.

Circus: the picture show

2012-01-06T18:09:00.000-08:00

A Dichotomy of Laura

2012-01-02T14:13:00.001-08:00

Laura Hunt in "Laura" -also known as "Vertigo" by Otto Preminger (1944)

VS
Laura Palmer in "Twin Peaks"
by David Lynch (1990)

In order to simplify this text and not to be repetitive, I will refer to Laura Hunt as a victim, though in Preminger's movie Laura is finally alive.

As a matter of fact, the beginning of everything was a novel by Vera Caspary (1942), from this text we have the first names which appear in the two main stories:
Laura, the girl main character in both movies

Waldo Lydeckerin 1944: middle-aged writer friend of Laura;

in 1990: a blackbird, which could have been the key witness if it wasn't shut to murdered; what seems to remain unused is the surname Lydecker but Lynch used it as the name of the clinic where Waldo was "hospitalized": Lydecker Veterinary Clinic.

Besides, other secondary characters keep the same names:

Diane: in 1944 she's a friend of Laura killed on her behalf, while in 1990 there are two character that can have something to do with this;
Dana: Laura's best friend and Diane, the imaginary secretary who is supposed to listen all those tapes recorded by detective Dale Cooper.

There is also a main character with strong analogies, exception for the name: detective Mark McPherson/Dake Cooper. Both of them fall are hired to find out who killed Laura, then they fall in love with her, though knowing she was dead.
"You'd better watch out, McPherson, or you'll end up in a psychiatry ward. I don't think they ever had a patient who fell in love with a corpse." (Waldo Lydecker, 1944)

I don't know what about the book, but also Jacoby is a recurring name:

in 1946 he is the painter of Laura's portrait;
in 1990 he is her psychiatrist.

But the most strongly presence in the two movies is the portrait itself.

in 1946 it opens and closes the movie with titles running on it;
in 1990 it just closes the movie and titles run on it.

THE PLOT

• Laura is already dead at the beginning of the story. She is evoked through her portrait/picture, people's memories, and through flash-backs;
• the detective is falling in love with her though she's dead (as said above);

• the detective and other people are looking for the key: in 1946 the key of the country house, in 1990 the key of safe deposit box;

• the police reads Laura's secret diary;

• many men are involved in Laura's life;

• the boyfriend Shelby/James betrays Laura with her Diane/Dana;

• the relationship between Laura-Waldo (1944) is similar to the relationship between Laura and his father (1990), because of the difference of ages between the two, and of course because the both killed Laura as hadn't to be of anyone else.

This text wants to put the basis for a comparison between the two stories. I will be more than happy to add points and develop others accordingly to people's suggestions.

Historia Naturae, Suita (1967) by Jan Svankmajer

2011-12-26T11:34:00.001-08:00

Maurizio Cattelan. All

2011-12-26T11:08:00.001-08:00

@ Guggenheim New York, until January 22, 2012

image taken from www.visualtherapyonline.com

R for Red Rocks

2011-12-11T13:31:00.001-08:00

Sentier des douaniers, Perros-Guirec, France

I Want To Be Evil by Eartha Kitt

2011-12-02T17:45:00.001-08:00

Trilogy: the Saint, the Young and the Wisdom by Adolfo Wildt (1912)

2011-11-13T07:55:00.001-08:00

This statue is located inside Villa Reale park, in Milan.
It is very difficult to notice the statue inside the chapel, because, as you can see, the protective glass acts like a mirror.
It is unbelievable that such a great statue is spending dozens of years unseen.

The Feast of Trimalchio by AES+F

2011-10-09T05:28:00.000-07:00

(Abstract taken from www.aes-group.org)

In the 'Satyricon', the work of the great wit and melancholic lyric poet of Nero's reign, Gaius Petronius Arbiter, the best preserved part is 'The Feast of Trimalchio' (Cena Trimalchionis). Thanks to Petronius's fantasy, Trimalchio's name became synonymous with wealth and luxury, with gluttony and with unbridled pleasure in contrast to the brevity of human existence.

We searched for an analogue in the third millennium and Trimalchio, the former slave, the nouveau riche host of feasts lasting several days, appeared to us not so much as an individual as a collective image of a luxurious hotel, a temporary paradise which one has to pay to enter.

The hotel guests, the 'masters', are from the land of the Golden Billion. They're keen to spend their time, regardless of the season, as guests of the present-day Trimalchio, who has created the most exotic and luxurious hotel possible. The hotel miraculously combines a tropical coastline with a ski resort. The 'masters' wear white which calls to mind the uniform of the righteous in the Garden of Eden, or traditional colonial dress, or a summer fashion collection. The 'masters' possess all of the characteristics of the human race - they are all ages and types and from all social backgrounds. Here is the university professor, the broker, the society beauty, the intellectual. Trimalchio's 'servants' are young, attractive representatives of all continents who work in the vast hospitality industry as housekeeping staff, waiters, chefs, gardeners, security guards and masseurs. They are dressed in traditional uniforms with an ethnic twist. The 'servants' resemble the brightly-colored angels of a Garden of Eden to which the 'masters' are only temporarily admitted.

On one hand the atmosphere of 'The Feast of Trimalchio' can be seen as bringing together the hotel rituals of leisure and pleasure (massage and golf, the pool and surfing). On the other hand the 'servants' are more than attentive service-providers. They are participants in an orgy, bringing to life any fantasy of the 'masters', from gastronomic to erotic. At times the 'masters' unexpectedly end up in the role of 'servants'. Both become participants in an orgiastic gala reception, a dinner in the style of Roman saturnalia when slaves, dressed as patricians, reclined at table and their masters, dressed in slaves' tunics, served them.

Every so often the delights of 'The Feast of Trimalchio' are spoiled by catastrophes which encroach on the Global Paradise...

AES+F, 2009

Nicolas de Staël (1914-1955)

2011-10-09T03:33:00.000-07:00

During his carrier de Stael painted about one hundred canvas, some of them are on view at Musée Picasso in Antibes, where the artist moved in 1954 and committed suicide an year later.
Particularly impressive is "Le concert" (1955), oil on canvas, 6 x 3 meters.

"Leap into the void", an essay about the relationship between the filmaker Jean-Luc Godard and Nicolas de Staël's work, has been written by Sally Shafto; it can be read here.

I report below a few lines.

"Pierrot le fou" makes most visible Godard’s debt to de Staël. Here the painter is both named in the narrative and imitated visually on the image track. On the run from the police, Ferdinand and Marianne notice that people stare at them suspiciously. In order to put them at their ease, Ferdinand suggests that he and Marianne tell them “stories. The right words might move them.” When Marianne asks him what kind of stories, Ferdinand replies: “The fall of Constantinople, or the story of Nicolas de Staël and his suicide or the one about William Wilson.”

[...]

In the final scenes of Pierrot le fou, the visual link to de Staël becomes explicit. The make-up artist Jackie Reynal recalls:

"For Pierrot le fou Godard decided to shoot in Porquerolles [in the south of France] because of its light, of its whiteness. There, the whites, the blues, the reds are more intense. That’s where the idea of Belmondo painting his face in blue came from – obviously not an idea of a make-up artist!"

Parc Naturel Regional du Verdon, France

2011-10-02T14:50:00.002-07:00

Right above here there is a pic of Moustiers St Marie, a beautiful village in the middle of Verdon area.

In the middle of the sky between the two peaks, you can see a shining dot, it is the legendary gold star of Moustiers.

Moustiers evokes a Nativity scene: confined between two rock ledges, a star dominates the village from a great height...

According to Frédéric Mistral (writer), the star is an ex-voto dedicated to St. Mary. The knight Blacas decided to hang a star there as a homage to the Virgin on his return from the Crusades.

Other versions talk about love stories, the Three Kings or Chivalry... Although many versions exist about the origin of the star none have been verified to date. The mystery remains total on the origin and meaning of the star above Moustiers… The size of the star we see today dates from 1957. It is the eleventh to hang above the mountain road. In 1995 it was covered in gold leaf before returning to its vigil over the village. The size of the star, which originally had five points has changed over time from 1.80 to 30 cm. Today, the chain is 135 m long, weighs 150kg and the star covered in gold leaf measures 1.25 m.

Legend taken from www.moustiers.fr

Le plaisir by Max Ophuls

2011-09-10T15:30:00.000-07:00

Runtime: 97 min.; France, 1952. With: Danielle Darrieux, Jean Gabin, Simone Simon.

Roving with his dazzlingly mobile camera around the decadent ballrooms, bucolic countryside retreats, urban bordellos, and painter's studios of late nineteenth-century French life, Max Ophuls brings his astonishing visual dexterity and storytelling bravura to this triptych of tales by Guy de Maupassant about the limits of spiritual and physical pleasure. Featuring a stunning cast of French stars (including Danielle Darrieux, Jean Gabin, and Simone Simon), Le plaisir pinpoints the cruel ironies and happy compromises of life with a charming and sophisticated breeziness.
Inspired to three novels by Guy de Maupassant.

Abstract taken from surrealmoviez.com

Summer Tomato Sauce

2011-08-29T12:47:00.000-07:00

The Conformist by Bernardo Bertolucci

2011-08-29T12:39:00.000-07:00

Runtime: 106 min.; Italy, France, West Germany, 1970;

With: Jean-Louis Trintignant, Stefania Sandrelli, Gastone Moschin, Enzo Tarascio.

In 1938 Marcello has just taken a job working for Mussolini.
When he got married, he brought his wife with him in Paris, with the excuse of honeymoon; but his bosses have an assignment for him there. Look up an old professor who fled Italy when the fascists came into power and get rid of him.
Marcello's mental disorders make the work not easy, also because of his attraction for the professor's wife.
The story is taken from the homonymic book written by Alberto Moravia in 1950.

The Dying of the Pythia by Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1976)

2011-08-16T06:33:00.000-07:00

"The Delphic priestess Pannychis XI, tall and skinny like most of her predecessors, had listened, disgruntled by her own oracular mischief and the gullibility of the Greeks, to the youthful Oedipus: Here once again was someone wanting to know if his parents were his parents, as if that was easy to determine in aristocratic circles, really, when there wives who claimed that Zeus himself had shared their beds, and husbands who even believed that. Previously in such cases, since inquires were already in doubt, the Pythia had simply replied: "Partly yes–partly no," but today the whole business struck her as too stupid, perhaps only because it was already after five when the pale youth came limping along (she really should have closed down the sanctuary), and so–whether to cure him of superstitious faith in the arts of divination or because, out of a malicious whim, she just felt like annoying the blasé prince from Corinth– she made as absurd and improbable a prediction as possible, one that she was certain would never come to pass. For, Pannychis thought, who would be capable of murdering his own father and sleeping with his own mother, except in those incest-ridden stories about gods and demigods, which she considered to be fairy tales anyway."

Planting and Picking Spider Webs in the Vegetable Garden

2011-08-16T06:16:00.000-07:00

The Double by Fëdor Dostoevskij (1846)

2011-08-09T08:50:00.000-07:00

Dvojnik (The Double) is the second novel by Dostoevskij and it has a subtitle: A Petersburg Poem, which comes from Gogol's Death Souls, defined "a poem" by the Gogol himself, and Puskin's The Bronze Horseman called by the author himself "Petersburg Novel".

Here is an excerpt.

Dear Sir Jakov Petrovic,I should not take up my pen if my circumstances, and your own action, sir, had not compelled me to that step. Believe me that nothing but necessity would have induced me to enter upon such a discussion with you and therefore, first of all, I beg you sir, to look upon this step of mine not as the inevitable consequence of the circumstance that is a bond between us now.

("I think that's all right, proper, courteous, though not lacking in force and firmness . . . I don't ink there is anything for him to take offense at. Besides, I'm fully within my rights," thought Mr.Goljadkin, reading over what he had written.)

"Your strange and sudden appearance, sir, on a stormy night, after the coarse and unseemly behavior of my enemies to me, for whom I feel too much contempt even to mention their names, was the starting-point of all the misunderstanding existing between us at the present time. Your obstinate desire to persisting your course of action, sir and forcibly to enter the circle of my existence and all my relations in practical life, transgresses every limit imposed by the merest politeness and every rule of civilized society. I image there is no need, sir, for me to refer to the seizure by you of my papers, and particularly to your taking away my good name, in order to gain the favor of my superiors–favor you have not deserved. There is no need to refer here either to your intentional and insulting refusal of the necessary explanation in regard to us. Finally, to omit nothing, I will not allude here to your last strange, one may even say, your incomprehensible behavior to me in the coffee-house. I am far from lamenting over the needless–for me–loss of a ruble; but I cannot help expressing my indignation at the recollection of your public outrage upon me, to the detriment of my honor, and what is more, in the presence of several persons of good breeding, though not belonging to my circle of acquaintance.

"(Am I not going too far?" thought Mr.Goljadkin. "Isn't it too much; won't it be too insulting–that taunt about good breeding, for instance? . . . But there, it doesn't matter! I must show him the resoluteness of my character. I might, however, to soften him, flatter him, and butter him up at the end. But there, we shall see.")

"But I should not weary you with my letter, sir, if I were not firmly convinced that the nobility of your sentiments and your open, candid, character would suggest to you yourself a means for retrieving all lapses and returning everything to its original position.With full confidence I venture to rest assured that you will not take my letter in a sense derogatory to yourself, and at the same time that you will not refuse to explain yourself expressly on this occasion by letter, sending the same by my man.

In expectation of your reply. I have the honor, dear sir, to remain,

Your humble servant,

J. Goljadkin

Here is a painting mentioned in the book, "The Last Day of Pompei" (1833) by Karl Bryullow (1799-1852). It was exhibited at the St.Petersburg Academy of Arts while Dostoevskij was writing "The Double"; it provoked much press commentary both in Russia and abroad.

Touring Abruzzo region, Italy

2011-08-05T06:55:00.001-07:00

Gran Sasso d'Italia
Staring point: Prati di Tivo (1450 m, near Pietracamela, Teramo), cableway to La Madonnina station and then 1 hour walking to the refuge Franchetti at 2433 m which is located in the middle of Vallone delle Cornacchie, between the Corno Grande and Corno Piccolo walls with a wonderful view of Teramo province’s hills and the Adriatic sea.
The Franchetti is a small refuge that keep the original spirit of the ancient alpine refuges where you can experience a genuine atmosphere among guests and people living and working there. More info: http://www.rifugiofranchetti.it/
It's difficult to find a complete sunny day on Gran Sasso, as the peaks seem to generate clouds; however clouds move fast and one can see all the panoramic view to the valley... a little at the time.
The day after, walking down again to Madonnina and then Prati di Tivo, I couldn't resist a ride on the down hill bike: 4 km path through the woods, more dangerous than I thought but funny, worth it. More info http://www.gransassomtb.it/

Natural Reserve Calanchi, Atri

The badlands (calanchi in Italian) are an erosive geomorphic phenomenon caused by rainwater, typical of Mediterranean area. Badlands generate when there is presence of: clayey soil with a good percentage of sand, slopes with high slope, but not excessive, preferably south exposure, soil and climate characterized by thin storms and dry seasons. Images and info taken from http://www.riservacalanchidiatri.it/

Loreto Aprutino

Trekking-Biking-Swimming day

2011-08-03T15:09:00.000-07:00

Orgia by Pier Paolo Pasolini (1968)

2011-07-26T02:16:00.000-07:00

Orgia (Orgy) is a theatre piece. I was looking for the English version to upload it here but I didn't find it.
However, I really felt to share a part of this text and therefore I tried to translate it.
Please excuse the terrible mistakes I made. Original Italian version is below.

WOMAN
[...] Was the sun up on the blue sulfate gutters?
Or on the walls made of stones over manure deposits? And those voices
streamed down with peace the quiet anguish of the day.
The sunset came slowly, a kind of must of other planets,
was the red color as heavy as a divine dough?
Well, those voices, strangely cheerful, rose
on the side of the bell tower or of the farmhouse on the asphalt road.
YET NO ONE WAS SPEAKING.
Finally, evenings came, as well as the curfew -
blue on the snow, hot and grey on poppies -
and those voices, even singing, came from the gardens,
think!, gardens, and not orange and lemon gardens,
but large oak trees and alfalfa, with some dahlia.
YET NO ONE WAS SPEAKING.

MAN:
My people were a little different, actually. They lived
in a provincial town. There were arches of a lodge, where voices
sounded in restaurants renowned to strangers and merchants of oxen.
YET NO ONE WAS SPEAKING. And there was, at the top, a castle,
where, with those of the swallows, the voices of children and nurses
sounded, piercing as roses
too much light from the mountain - YET NO ONE WAS SPEAKING.
In the evening the square before the palace of the Municipality,
where Venice and Turin and Bologna were capital cities
imitated in small and sublime, the voices came
from cafes opened till late, if it was summer,
or between the desolated screeches of the last train
if it was winter,
(and I do not forget the thundering voices coming
from small corner cinema): BUT NO ONE WAS SPEAKING.

WOMAN:
If voices were
modulated as in rustic Middle Ages way,
passed through the nineteenth century sense, or
in a badly taken language,
on this point there is no question: NO ONE WAS SPEAKING.

MAN:
And in the family?

WOMAN:
It was like in yours.

MAN:
A father who opened his mouth to emit disgusting sounds
of command, became a grim old soldier
thanks to wine and half poverty, WITHOUT SPEAKING?
A mother, unconscious and far away like a bird
who opened her mouth to defend herself or cry
inappropriately protest - WITHOUT SPEAKING?

WOMAN:
Yes, something like this. My father was nice
although old, and he opened his mouth to say something
said in turn by his forefathers, commanding
the little girl sweetly, the boy with awe
- YET NO ONE WAS SPEAKING.
My mother was still in love with him
and opened her mouth to say things about house and food,
in a language made for the two of them - YET NO ONE WAS SPEAKING.

MAN:
Nobody in that world had something to say
to another, and yet it was all a sound of voices.
And you, how did you learn to speak?

WOMAN:
Listening to those voices.

MAN:
But did they told you something? And what?

WOMAN:
Oh no, they were only voices. They, indeed,
said my name, and indicated
all the things surrounding us, and we used them,
in that world: BUT THEY DIDN'T SPEAK.

MAN:
So what did you learn?

WOMAN:
To have a voice.

MAN:
And me too. And me too.
But inside our souls, in the meantime, what was going on?
THE NOT SPOKEN WORD FOUND ITS PLACE.

WOMAN:
Yes, in me as well, but I was never able to pronounce it.

Excerpt from Episode I - translated by myself.
_______________________________________

DONNA:
[…] Il sole picchiava sulle grondaie azzurre di solfato?
O sui muri di sassi sopra i concimai? E quelle voci
rigavano di pace l'angoscia, tranquilla, del giorno.
Veniva pian piano il tramonto, una specie di mosto d'altri pianeti,
il cui rosso era pesante come una pasta divina?
Ebbene, quelle voci, stranamente allegre, si alzavano
dalla parte del campanile o del casolare sulla strada d'asfalto.
EPPURE NESSUNO PARLAVA.
Infine, scendevano le sere, veniva il coprifuoco –
blu sulla neve, cinerino e caldo sui papaveri –
e quelle voci, perfino cantando, venivano dai giardini,
pensa!, dai giardini, e non di aranci e limoni,
ma di grandi querce e erba medica, con qualche dalia.
EPPURE NESSUNO PARLAVA.

UOMO:
La mia gente era in verità un po' diversa. Viveva
in una città di provincia. C'erano i portici di una loggia, dove quelle voci risuonavano
lungo i ristoranti noti ai forestieri e ai mercanti di buoi.
EPPURE NESSUNO PARLAVA. E c'era, in alto, un castello,
dove, con quelle delle rondini, risuonavano le voci
dei bambini e delle nutrici, acute come rose
dalla troppa luce montana – EPPURE NESSUNO PARLAVA.
La sera la piazzetta davanti al palazzo del Comune,
dove Venezia o Torino o Bologna furono capitali
imitate in piccolo e in sublime, le voci venivano
dai caffè aperti fin tardi, s'era estate, o tra gli stridii
desolati, s'era inverno, degli ultimi tram
(e non dimentico le voci tuonanti
dei piccoli cinema rionali): MA NESSUNO PARLAVA.

DONNA:
Che le voci fossero
modulate come in un rustico medioevo, passato
attraverso il buon senso dell'Ottocento, oppure
fossero in lingua (una lingua male adottata),
su questo punto non ci sono dubbi: NESSUNO PARLAVA.

UOMO:
E nella famiglia?

DONNA:
Era come nella tua.

UOMO:
Un padre che apriva bocca per emettere schifosi suoni
di comando, reso torvo come un vecchio soldato
dal vino e dalla mezza povertà, E NON PARLAVA?
Una madre, incosciente e lontana come un uccellino,
che apriva bocca per difendersi o piangere
o protestare inopportunamente – E NON PARLAVA?

DONNA:
Sì, all'incirca così. Il mio padre era bello
anche se anziano, e apriva bocca per dire cose
dette a loro volta dai suoi padri, comandando
alla bambina con dolcezza, al bambino con soggezione
– EPPURE NESSUNO PARLAVA.
La mia madre era innamorata ancora di lui
e apriva bocca per dire cose di casa e di cibo,
in un linguaggio fatto per loro due – EPPURE NESSUNO PARLAVA.

UOMO:
Nessuno in quel mondo aveva qualcosa da dire
a un altro: eppure era tutto un risuonare di voci.
E tu come hai imparato a parlare?

DONNA:
Ascoltando quelle voci.

UOMO:
Ma ti dicevano qualcosa? E che cosa?

DONNA:
Oh no, erano soltanto voci. Esse, è vero,
facevano il mio nome, e indicavano
tutte le cose che ci circondavano e ci servivano,
in quel mondo: MA NON PARLAVANO.

UOMO:
E allora cosa hai imparato?

DONNA:
Ad avere una voce.

UOMO:
E così anch’io. E così anch’io.
Ma dentro l’anima, intanto, cosa ci succedeva?
CERCAVA DI PRENDER POSTO LA PAROLA NON DETTA.

DONNA:
sì, anche in me: ma non ho saputo mai pronunciarla.

Estratto dell'episodio I

Canne al vento by Grazia Deledda (1913)

2011-07-23T08:48:00.000-07:00

Canne al vento (Reeds in the Wind) tells the story of the Pintor sisters, Ruth, Ester, Noemi, and Lia, who live in early-twentieth-century Sardinia. The aristocratic Pintor family was once wealthy, but now the three surviving sisters, long bereft of both parents, are barely eking out a living in their dilapidated home. Indeed, they would not even have a roof over their heads were it not for the forbearance of their loyal servant Efix, who is himself old and in failing health. Without remuneration, Efix has helped the sisters survive for years; he has done this because he feels a deep loyalty to them, but also out of a strong sense of guilt. Why Efix feels guilty constitutes the crux of this fascinating story of a noble family in decline. As we follow the actions of the primary characters and share the memoirs of Efix, we learn about the past history of the Pintors, and indeed of the entire Sardinian village in which they live.

Taken from italicapress.com

Venus Noire by Abdel Kechiche (2010)

2011-07-15T11:18:00.000-07:00

Runtime: 166 min.; France, Italy, Belgium, 2010.

with: Yahima Torrès, Andre Jacobs, Olivier Gourmet, Jonathan Pienaar, Jean-Christophe Bouvet.

The story of Saartjes Baartman, a Black domestic who, in 1808, left Southern Africa, then ruled by Dutch settlers, for Europe, following her boss Hendrick Caesar , hoping to find fame and fortune there. Once in London her master turned manager does nothing but exhibit her as a freak in a phony and humiliating carnival show. After a series of troubles caused by their act, Caesar, Saartje and their new friend, bear-tamer Réaux, head for Paris where once again, and against her will, she has to mimic savagery and expose her body, first in carnivals, then in the aristocratic salons of Paris, later on among the libertines and finally in brothels where she ends up being a prostitute. In the meantime, French anatomists will have taken an interest in her unusual anatomy (enormous buttocks and labia) only to declare her the missing link from ape to man. In 1815, aged only 27, she dies alone, of a combination of pneumonia and venereal disease.

Abstract taken from imdb.com

After the duel by Antonio Mancini, 1872

2011-07-10T23:59:00.000-07:00

Oil on canvas, 162 x 105 cm, Galleria Civica d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Turin

Marble Hermaphrodites

2011-07-01T05:09:00.000-07:00

Hermaphroditos Asleep

Roman work of the Imperial period (second century AD)

Discovered in Rome near the Baths of Diocletian in 1608, this statue was one of the most admired masterpieces of the Borghese Collection in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In 1619, Cardinal Scipione Borghese commissioned the Baroque Italian sculptor Bernini to carve the mattress on which the ancient marble now lies. In the same year, David Larique worked on the restoration of the figure of Hermaphroditos. The work came to the Louvre after it had been bought, together with the rest of the Borghese Collection, by Napoleon I from his brother-in-law, Prince Camillo Borghese. Although the figure of Hermaphroditos in the Louvre is the best known, three other versions of the ancient statue have sometimes been compared with it: that of Velletri (also in the Louvre), that in the Uffizi in Florence, and a third version in the Villa Borghese in Rome. (taken from Louvre.fr)

Barry X Ball. Sleeping Hermaphrodite 2008 - 2010

sculpture: Belgian Black Marble
base: Carrara Marble, stainless steel, Delrin
173.0 x 90.2 x 46.4 cm

Hermaphroditum Nobilem Fecit by Jean-Pierre Criqui
Exhibited for the first time in the fall of 2010, during the FIAC art fair in Paris at the Louvre (a few steps from its primary model), Barry X Ball’s Sleeping Hermaphrodite is singular on more than one level. The work’s aesthetic and relationship to art history seemingly implies supreme indifference towards the past century and a half; and there is a considerable technological feat that underlies the piece and the place that it occupies within the artist’s oeuvre, an oeuvre that, truth be told, seems without equivalent among his contemporaries. These are factors that come together to create something that seems to have come out of nowhere, an anthropomorphic aerolith where the antique, the Baroque and science fiction all unite. But ultimately, Barry X Ball’s Hermaphrodite stands out because of the way it reanimates or calls into play one of the characteristics that is both the most archaic and the most complex of the art ofsculpture, namely the characteristic of being an object that is subject to displacement, both literal and symbolic, and the focus of echoing condensations.
Shortly before 1620, a Roman antique made of white marble representing a hermaphrodite, eyes closed, was discovered in Rome in the gardens of Santa Maria della Vittoria, not far from the Baths of Diocletian. Cardinal Scipione Borghese, to whom the statue was offered, commissioned a young Bernini to create the mattress on which the statue has been resting since.1 We are therefore dealing with a kind of assemblage, a combine that merges two parts separated by some fifteen centuries. In addition to the figure’s two sexes, there comes the encounter not only of distant eras, but also of two artists, equally distanced. Barry X Ball’s choice here becomes a manifesto: before he even tackled it, the Borghese Hermaphroditus was already a composite, plural work. It is also what we might call a “de-territorialized” work, detached from the site where it was created and exhibited: it was purchased in 1807 by Napoleon, who sent it to Paris, where the Louvre became its home. An exile, like so many sculptures, including the Horses of San Marco, to take an example close to the present exhibition. Their journey is dizzying: arriving in Venice at the start of the thirteenth century from Constantinople where they stood for almost nine hundred years (imported from Rome or Greece by Emperor Constantine when his new capital was being established), they were sent to Paris in 1797 by the armies of the Directoire, and, after having been installed in various locations (including the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel), only came to embellish the façade of the Venetian basilica in 1815. Finally, if that can really be said, it should be noted that the Hermaphrodite exhumed at the beginning of the Seicento is a copy—one of several from the same era is conserved at The Uffizi, and another in the Borghese Collection is a copy of a Greek bronze statue that disappeared long ago. Pliny, in his Natural History (XXXIV, 80), attributed the bronze to Polycles, a sculptor from the middle of the second century BC: “Polycles made a noble Hermaphrodite” (Polycles Hermaphroditum nobilem fecit). With the original lost, forever inaccessible, something that also hovers around Barry X Ball’s work, we are reminded of the lack of origin, the fundamental instability that seems to paradoxically yet so often characterize the art of mass and weight that is sculpture.
With the 2010 Hermaphrodite, we therefore confront an infinite reverberation (who knows, in fact, on whom or what Polycles based his piece), fed by countless copies of every size and material, and more or less obvious adaptations (for example The Sleeping Nymph sculpted by Canova, today housed at the Victoria and Albert Museum), which all resulted from the admiration the statue at the Villa Borghese enjoyed over two centuries. Another displacement, which belongs to the tradition of all those undergone after Polycles’s “original”: the androgynous figure sculpted by Barry X Ball is black. Made of marble, like his Roman/Baroque model, but in a black marble, from which the artist was able to draw out luminous values—the matte quality of the mattress, the shine of the figure. These complement various pairs of polarities activated by this work. Barry X Ball’s Hermaphrodite is the “negative” of its predecessor because of its color, because of the chromatic inversion; the piece’s process of execution is therefore based on a photographic principle. Herein lies a subliminal connection to Ball’s first works from the early 1980s: a relationship to the tradition of the monochrome, and, more specifically, the Radical Painting2 movement.
The penis of the Roman Hermaphrodite (otherwise endowed with a mostly feminine quality) is the scandalous center of the work, the point of madness around which the system of meaning forms; it fires up the minds of viewers and interpreters (what’s more, many copies do not represent it). In his version, the American sculptor made some significant changes in relation to his prototype. Noteworthy is the fact that at one point he contemplated the possibility of fashioning an image after his own member, a demiurgic gesture in which one might find an aspect of self-engenderment and also a new take on the romantic ideal of the artist as double, a coming together of opposites— of feminine and masculine, notably—while going beyond them. Androgyny is its embodiment in art, as is the real. “That real body,” wrote Roland Barthes with regard to the highly ambivalent character that appears throughout Balzac’s novella Sarrasine, “is total (glorious, miraculous) only insofar as it descends from a body already written by statuary (Ancient Greece, Pygmalion); it too (like the other bodies in Sarrasine) is a replica, issuing from a code.”3 Barry X Ball’s replica, which is both phoenix and avatar, is another Hermaphrodite destined for the greatest fame.

1. See the entry note on the Hermaphrodite in the handsome book by Francis Haskell & Nicholas Penny, Taste and the Antique: The Lure of Classical Sculpture, 1500-1900, New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 1981, pp. 234-236. For a few edifiying insights on the vicissitudes of the figure of the hermaphrodite in art, see Seymour Howard’s study, “Henry Blundell’s Sleeping Venus” in his collection Antiquity Restored: Essays on the Afterlife of the Antique, Vienna, IRSA, 1990, pp. 117-129. 2. Regarding this point, as well as the work of the artist dating from the second half of the 1980s, see Jean-Pierre Criqui, “Two or Three Indications Concerning the Work of Barry X Ball,” exh. cat. Barry X Ball, Domaine de Kerguéhennec, 1990 (n.p.). 3. S/Z, Paris, Éditions du Seuil, 1970, “Lii. Le chef-d’oeuvre.” One will remember that in Sarrasine, dated November 1830 by Balzac, the eponymous character is a sculpture with an ambiguous name (referring to a man but endowed with a feminine tone). This sculptor hires as a model a woman—who actually isn’t a woman—with whom he falls helplessly in love. The virtual bisexuality of the artist is a recurring motif in romanticism, as is also seen in Théophile Gautier’s novel Mademoiselle Maupin (1834). Its heroine is at times a girl, at times a boy (the preface to the book is the first great French manifesto on art for art’s sake). Gautier, who was also a painter and art critic, greatly admired the Louvre’s Hermaphrodite Endormi; he later wrote a poem about it entitled “Contralto,” which appears in Émaux et Camées, written in 1852.

Text taken from Barry X Ball. Portraits and Masterpieces, Charta 2011.
Book accompanying the exhibition on view at Ca' Rezzonico, Venice
June 1st - September 11, 2011)

Amy Cutler (b.1974)

2011-06-24T03:53:00.000-07:00

I Thought They Were Flowers

2011-06-19T03:50:00.000-07:00

Venice Biennale /5: Maurizio Cattelan

2011-06-19T03:32:00.001-07:00

The Others, 2,000 stuffed pigeons, 2011.

Exhibition: IllumiNAZIONI, International pavilion, Giardini della Biennale, Venezia.

Venice Biennale /4: Adrian Ghenie

2011-06-11T14:07:00.000-07:00

Untitled, 2009, oil on canvas, 33 X 38 cm

Pie Fight Study 2, 2008, oil on canvas, 55 X 59 cm

Pie Fight Study 3, 2008, oil on canvas, 30 x 40 cm

Pie Fight Study 4, 2008, oil on canvas, 70 x 60 cm

Adrian Ghenie

Born in 1977 in Baia - Mare, Romania
Lives and works in Cluj, Romania and Berlin, Germany

On view at the exhibition "One of A Thousand Ways to Defeat Entropy"

Arsenale Nuovissimo - Tese di San Cristoforo Cannaregio 4392, Venice

June 2-November 27, 2011

Venice Biennale /3: Yael Bartana

2011-06-11T13:43:00.000-07:00

The exhibition … and Europe will be stunned is the official Polish participation at the 54th International Art Exhibition in Venice in 2011.

This video installation by the Israeli-born artist Yael Bartana is the first time a non-Polish national has represented Poland in the history of the Venice Biennale. Bartana’s three films Mary Koszmary (2007), Mur i wieża (2009) and Zamach (2011) revolve around the activities of the Jewish Renaissance Movement in Poland (JRMiP), a political group that calls for the return of 3,300,000 Jews to the land of their forefathers. The films traverse a landscape scarred by the histories of competing nationalisms and militarisms, overflowing with the narratives of the Israeli settlement movement, Zionist dreams, anti-Semitism, the Holocaust and the Palestinian right of return. Apart from realising the film trilogy, a new political movement has been established by the artist.

Mary Koszmary (Nightmare) is the first film in the trilogy and explores a complicated set of social and political relationships among Jews, Poles and other Europeans in the age of globalisation. A young activist, played here by Sławomir Sierakowski (founder and chief editor of Krytyka Polityczna magazine), delivers a speech in the abandoned National Stadium in Warsaw. He urges three million Jews to come back to Poland. Using the structure and sensibility of a World War II propaganda film, Mary Koszmary addresses contemporary anti-Semitism and xenophobia in Poland, the longing for the Jewish past among liberal Polish intellectuals and the Zionist dream of return to Israel. As Yael Bartana says: ‘This is a very universal story; as in previous works, I have treated Israel as a sort of a social laboratory, always looking at it from the outside. These are mechanisms and situations which can be observed anywhere in the world. My recent works are not just stories about two nations — Poles and Jews. This is a universal presentation of the impossibility of living together.’

The second film in the trilogy Mur i wieża (Wall and Tower) was made in the Warsaw district of Muranów, where a new kibbutz was erected at actual scale and in the architectural style of the 1930’s. This kibbutz, constructed in the centre of Warsaw, was an utterly ‘exotic’ structure, even despite its perverse reflection of the history of the location, which had been the Jewish residential area before the war, and then a part of Warsaw Ghetto. The film invokes previous heroic images of strong and beautiful men and women who mythically established Israel. They were depicted as determined pioneers who, despite the most unfavorable conditions, kept building houses, cultivating land, studying, bringing up children collectively, sharing their assets and constantly training to fight off potential enemy attacks. This is the world that the artist proposes to resurrect in the 21st century, in an entirely different political and geographical configuration. Bartana again: ‘I quote the past, the time of Socialist utopia, youthfulness and optimism — when there was a project of constructing a modernist idea of a new world.’

In the new film Zamach (Assassination), the final part of the trilogy, which has its premiere at the 54th International Art Exhibition in Venice and is shown in parallel at the Zachęta National Gallery of Art in Warsaw — Bartana brings the dream about multinational community and the brand new Polish society to the ultimate test. The plot of the film takes place in not too distant a future, during the funeral ceremony of the leader of the Jewish Renaissance Movement, who had been killed by an unidentified assassin. It is by means of this symbolic death that the myth of the new political movement is unified — a movement which can become a concrete project to be implemented in Poland, Europe, or the Middle East in the days to come.

The project by Yael Bartana (which consists of the films and foundations of a political movement) is an experimental form of collective psychotherapy through which national demons are stirred and dragged into consciousness. Apart from the complex Polish-Jewish relationship, this is a story about our readiness to accept the other and of the complexities of cultural integration in an unstable world where geography and politics are subject to radical shifts. Bartana tests reactions to the unexpected return of the ‘long unseen neighbour’ and recalls the forgotten motif of alternative locations for the state of Israel that were once considered by Zionists, such as Uganda.

Yael Bartana was born in 1970 in Kfar Yehezkel, Israel. Her artistic practice includes film, photography, video and sound installation. She has had numerous solo exhibitions,. e.g. at PS1, New York’ Moderna Museet, Malmö; Center for Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv; Kunstverein, Hamburg; Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, or Fridericianum, Kassel.She has also participated in such prestigious group shows as Manifesta 4, Frankfurt (2002); 27th São Paulo Biennial (2006) or documenta 12 in Kassel (2007). In her Israeli projects, Bartana dealt with the impact of war, military rituals and a sense of threat on everyday life. Since 2008, the artist has also been working in Poland, creating projects on the history of Polish-Jewish relations and its influence on the contemporary Polish identity. Yael Bartana is a winner of numerous prizes and awards, e.g. Artes Mundi 4 (Wales, 2010), Anselm Kiefer Prize (2003), Prix Dazibao (Montreal, 2009), Prix de Rome (Rijksakademie, Amsterdam, 2005), Dorothea von Stetten Kunstpreis (Kunstmuseum Bonn, 2005) or the Nathan Gottesdiener Foundation Israeli Art Prize (2007).

(Taken from www.labiennale.art.pl)

Venice Biennale /2: Jonathan Wateridge

2011-06-05T09:08:00.001-07:00

Directional Interchange, 2009, oil on canvas, 282 x 400 cm

Eye Network News, 2009, oil on canvas, 282 x 400 cm

The Architect’s House, 2009, oil on canvas, 282 x 400 cm

Pool Party, 2010, oil on canvas, 282 x 400 cm

Instore Security, 2009, oil on canvas, 282 x 400 cm

Jonathan Wateridge, born in 1972 in Zambia, lives and works in London. InAnother Place, a series of seven large canvases, Wateridge captures different moments in the production of an entirely fictional movie, loosely inspired by the story of William Mulholland, the engineer responsible for the construction and eventual collapse of the St Francis dam in 1928 – a tragedy that caused the death of hundreds of Californians. An atmosphere of impending disaster thus pervades each work – but the calamity itself takes place off-screen, in the false universe of the movie’s production. Wateridge subtly reveals the duplicitous nature of these images through various visual clues, such as the presence of a make-up artist painting a wound on an actor’s back in Directional Interchange. To produce these paintings, Wateridge duplicates filmmaking techniques: he meticulously stages each one, building sets and props and casting his friends as each performer/character. The life-size figures invite the viewer to participate in each of the immediately familiar but non-specific scenes, thus blurring the boundaries between the narrative and the production process. In what he describes as “elaborate fictions with visible seams,” Wateridge questions the nature of truth in images, whether they be painted, photo- graphed, or filmed.

(taken from Palazzo Grassi press folder)

On view at the exhibition "The World Belongs to You"

Palazzo Grassi, Campo San Samuele, Venice

June 2-December 31, 2011

Venice Biennale /1: Pietas by Jan Fabre

2011-06-05T02:08:00.000-07:00

During the 54th edition of the Venice Biennale, the Nuova Scuola Grande di Santa Maria della Misericordia hosts the latest exhibition of the works of Jan Fabre (Antwerp, 1958), entitled PIETAS; it includes five large sculptures in pure marble and Carrara statue marble.

Outstanding among these is Fabre’s unprecedented reinterpretation of Michelangelo’s Pietà, entitled Merciful Dream (Pietà V), in which he has given his own face to Christ, while Mary has the face of a skull, the symbol of death.

Jan Fabre choose Michelangelo, one of his primary sculptures: 1499 Pietà, the only one signed by the Italian artist, the man considered to have begun the emancipation of the modern artist from craftsmanship towards authorship.

The ellipsis of the brains are an extension of the circle; in the ellipsis-oval we see defined a sort of body-mind relationship, and also the origin of life, realized in the form of egg, which is the symbol of the beginning of generation and regeneration. We can see that all the forms and references used by Jan Fabre here have both a generative a regenerative quality in them, a cycle of life, death and rebirth generated by metaphoric reconciliation, which is the true core of his work. The brain ellipses is thus taken on by Fabre not as an anatomical organ, but as an organ of great symbolic power, the best element to renegotiate the passage from the origin to modernity and to the consequent reintegration of the origin itself. Hence Fabre attempts the rite of passage through which the brain -symbol of rational modernity as a seat of thought, as stated in the Cartesian "Cogito Ergo Sum" which separated body and mind- also assumes a symbolic value which goes beyond thought itself, reconciliation it with the flesh.

Fabre has attempted this passage for years and it is fair to say that he has madeVenice a seat of election, the location of his lesson in mythological anatomy, so that the ritual can be complete. In his exhibition at Palazzo Benzon was named "Anthropology of a Planet", where the planet was and is the brain. It was an exhibition in which, among drawings, sculptures, installations and videos, Fabre delved into the possibilities of this organ in depth, in his opinion overestimated by rational thought and underestimated as just the organ of thought.

Fabre updates Michelangelo's work in the light of the last fifty years; the Madonna that holds Fabre-Christ on her lap has a skull, the ultimate symbol of death, in place of her face. We know that in Michelangelo's Pietà the Madonna has a young face, younger than that of the son she cradles. She is younger because she is pure and already holy, while Fabre , by giving her the face of death, identifies her with the cranium which is the Calvary on which Christ was crucified and from which he has just been deposed. It is the place of sacrifice, theatre of the death of Christ, from which the Madonna still does not know he will resurrect. Thus the Madonna would like to take the place of her dead son like every mother, giving up her life for his.

This dead body that lies, but that is teeming with life, appears to us as a garden teeming with insects: a butterfly on the left cheek; a snail on the left side of the neck; a worm coming out of the right ear; another butterfly on the upper-right of the chest; a bee on the right forearm; a stag beetle on Fabre's tie, near his stomach; another snail on his left hand; a worm coming out from the right pocket of his jacket; three flies on his left cheek; a jewel scarab coming our of the right sleeve of his jacket; a scarab on his left thigh; a butterfly and a snail on his right thigh. And there are more: a butterfly on his right calf; a snail on his right foot; three bees on his right foot; a slug coming out from the hem of his left trousers leg; three flies on his left thigh; a tug beetle on his left foot and another on his left leg; a slug coming out from the left side of his jacket; a slug going into the left collar; a scarab on his right leg.

The body Fabre-Christ shares much with a garden populated by metaphoric creatures, propagators of nature through pollination, but also with the lost garden of Eden, that place that, should we believe and have been good, the sacrifice of Jesus will allow us to reach one day.

The marble insects highlight the vital cycle of metamorphosis, through their positioning on the sculpted brains and body of the dead Fabre-Christ, held by the Madonna-Death, a doubled-up death that further promotes his resurrection.

(taken from the Pietas - Jan Fabre, the book which accompanies the exhibition)

JAN FABRE. PIETAS

Venice, Nuova Scuola Grande di Santa Maria della Misericordia

Sestiere Cannaregio 3599 - Fondamenta della Misericordia

1 June – 16 October 2011

Too much Sun on Sunday to go to Louvre

2011-05-29T13:18:00.000-07:00

The Hero Overpowering a Lion

Neo-Assyrian period, reign of Sargon II (721-705 BC)

Khorsabad, ancient city of Dur Sharrukin, facade N of the throne room of the palace of Sargon II, Assyria (Iraq)

High relief, gypseous alabaster, traces of paint

H. 5.52 m; W. 2.18 m; D. 0.63 m

Excavations by P.E. Botta, 1843-44

Lion-taming spirits (often identified with the hero Gilgamesh) were part of a complex architectural and decorative system governed by artistic and religious criteria. They symbolized divine and royal power, and the calm strength that emanated from them protected the palace and ensured the continuity of the ruler's power.

This figure is a partial reconstruction of a monumental complex, which we know about from the drawings executed by Eugène Flandin in 1844 during the excavation of the entrance of the throne room of the palace of Sargon II. The outside facade of the throne room - facade N - was composed of a frieze, showing a procession of figures, and passageways guarded by colossal spirits: a pair of winged bulls with human heads and a pair of benevolent genies. The central passageway doubled this arrangement: in addition to the bulls in the passageway, there were four others along the wall, their heads turned towards the visitor. Between each pair was a lion-taming spirit: one of these figures was sent to the Louvre by Paul-Émile Botta.

Measuring over five meters high, the sculpture depicts a figure choking a lion. The spirit or hero overpowering the lion is in a frontal position, which is rare in Assyrian art and used only for creatures playing a magical role. In his right hand he holds a ceremonial weapon with a curved blade, known as a "harpe," which is a royal weapon. He is wearing a short tunic with a large fringed shawl over it, hiding one leg and revealing the other. The eye contact with the visitor has a magical impact. His head is sculpted almost in the round; the eyes, once brightly colored, were meant to mesmerize the visitor. His hair and beard are styled like those of Assyrian dignitaries and the king. The hero is wearing a bracelet with a rosette in the center. Excavations of the tombs of the queens at Nimrud yielded similar bracelets, which were made of gold and inlaid with precious stones to look like petals.

The lion is lifting its head and baring its teeth. Its muzzle is stylized with a series of radiating folds, which are also found on metal sculptures.

This spirit, often identified with the hero Gilgamesh, who was a legendary figure but also a historical king of Uruk, probably incarnates the omnipotence of kingship: he is effortlessly overpowering a ferocious lion. The contrast between the roaring lion and the hero's imperturbable strength highlights his magical power.

The set of ten bulls and two heroes, a royal heraldic emblem, was specially created for the facade of the throne room in the palace of Sargon II. All these facades, built on the high terrace of the palace overlooking the city, were clearly visible from afar and bore witness to the king's grandeur.

Taken from http://www.louvre.fr

Still Life (2001) by Sam Taylor-Wood

2011-05-06T07:47:00.001-07:00

Cutting Hamlet

2011-05-02T08:01:00.000-07:00

Hans Ulrich Obrist interviews Alain Robbe-Grillet

2011-04-26T05:24:00.000-07:00

This is a compilation of interviews that took place in Alain Robbe-Grillet’s appartment in Neuilly-sur-Seine between 2001 and 2004. Alain Robbe-Grillet [1922–2008] was a French author, literary critic and filmmaker credited as a leading proponent of the nouveau roman. His debut novel Les Gommes [The Erasers, 1953] established a critical approach that continued through subsequent works such as Le Voyeur[The Voyeur, 1955] and La Jalousie[Jealousy, 1957]. In 1961 Robbe-Grillet wrote the film script for L’année dernière à Marien- bad [Last Year in Marienbad] directed by Alain Resnais. His own films, from Trans- Europ-Express[1966] to C’est Gradiva qui vous appelle [2006], questioned cinematic narrative structure. In 2004 Robbe-Grillet was elected a member of the Academie Francaise.

HANS ULRICH OBRIST You have worked a lot withpainters.

ALAIN ROBBE-GRILLET That’s right, I have done so very often. For example, I did a book with Robert Rauschenberg [Traces Suspectes en Surface(Suspicious Marks on the Surface), 1978] that was a true collaboration. That was the period when he was incorporating actual magazines and newspapers into his lithographs. He poured petrol onto newspaper and printed it on stone. This produced an image that was not exactly that of the newspaper.

HUO How did you get the idea to work with Rauschenberg?

ARG I gave a lecture in New York, and often when I speak about literature, I borrow examples from outside, from music or painting for instance. That day I happened to start talking about Rauschenberg, and at the end of the lecture a little wrinkled lady came up to me. The lady was Tatyana Grosman, who founded ULAE, the lithography studio on Long Island where she made projects with Jasper Johns, Robert Motherwell, and nearly all the leading figures of Pop Art and its neighboring movements. She said, “This is extraordinary. I come to a lecture by Robbe-Grillet and he talks about Rauschenberg! This has convinced me: you really must do a book together.” I told her, “Yes, but I don’t like illustrated literature.” I explained to the lady very hastily that if I did a project it would have to be in the form of a dialogue with the painter. The book would have to be a succession of prints and text and the story would need to progress all the time, as if it were one and the same thing. She was delighted. I didn’t meet Rauschenberg then, as I had to get back to Paris and I had a boat to catch. There had been a very nasty air crash in Hamburg, and my wife not only refused to travel by air, but she wouldn’t let me fly either. So for the next ten years we had some very nice journeys by sea and by train.
Before I sailed two days later, Tatyana Grosman came to say goodbye and said, “I’m going to give you a check.” I told her there was no need, we didn’t have a contract and nothing had been settled. “Yes, I know,” she replied, “but if I give you money, you will feel committed.” She wrote out a check for five thousand dollars, which was a lot of money for me at the time, and told me to write to her. As I often went to New York then, I met Rauschenberg several times. The project took us five years to finish. She began by commissioning a big paper mill in France to make a special paper in filigree which had both Rauschenberg and my signature printed on it. Since the
text had to be the right way up, it was impossible to use litho and had to be offset. There was no point in me writing on stone so she sent me some zinc plates, which weighed a ton. As I wrote on the plates, I would send them off to New York. A few months later I received Rauschenberg’s reply, which was not an illustration of what I had written, but a continuation of it.

HUO You were in contact with George Segal, too.

ARG He was a great friend. Do you know how George Segal started? I really love that story. I have told it in one of my books. His father had a kosher butcher’s shop in Brooklyn. The window of this butcher’s shop is in one of my novels. His father had bought a large farm in New Jersey, which consisted mainly of hen houses. The family still owned this farm when I met George; his father was breeding kosher chickens! All of a sudden the Korean War broke out, and from one day to the next the army’s demand for chickens shot up. But of course they were not looking for kosher chickens, so his father rapidly “converted” to non-kosher military chicken! All this wasn’t looked upon too kindly in the family, but he did make money. George was secretly attending painting classes at New York University. But then, unluckily for his father’s chicken business, the Korean War ended, and the demand for army chickens plunged. Suddenly, they didn’t know what to do with all that poultry. It has to be said that he had been adding more
buildings to the farm, and by the end of the war there was a long row of interconnected hen houses and George had discovered a fascination for rotten chickens. He knew about [Chaïm] Soutine and was interested in his work. He had used meat in his paintings. And so George, who was painting at that time, started by painting rotten chickens. Suddenly, he had a revelation: he would make plaster casts of rotten chickens. So when the poultry business collapsed, his father said he wanted to close the whole thing and George told him he wanted to turn the chicken farm into an artist’s studio! And, in fact, it became his studio! I have a photo taken by Catherine Robbe-Grillet] in George’s studio, where you can see an example of one called Recession, of unemployed people queuing outside a welfare office. It’s a beautiful work. In the photo you can see George and I waiting in line at the end of the queue, striking poses. It’s a very good photo. It could be a fully fledgedwork in its own right.

HUO Did you spend a lot of time in New York?

ARG I started going regularly to New York to lecture and teach at New York University. I was ignored by New York writers but welcomed with open arms by painters. The interesting thing is that the New York painters were enthusiastic about Pour un nouveau roman[For a New Novel, 1963]. The fact that I was able to meet those great New York figures—Roy Lichtenstein, Bob Rauschenberg and James Rosenquist—was because they wanted to meet me. And Andy Warhol, too, even though I don’t have an unconditional admiration for him. However, he was one of those who welcomed me like a brother.

HUO It is certainly very interesting that these friendships were with painters rather than with other writers.

ARG I had the impression that there was progress in painting—and I weigh my words here: I found a very sharp progression that might be called actual progress. There was a highly percepti- ble change, while on another side I saw literature desperately clinging to Balzacian forms. At the time no one was reading [William] Faulkner or [Franz] Kafka or [James] Joyce. I felt more at ease in the milieu of painting because it was absolutely the opposite of the stiff world of literature, where there were rules and regulations to follow. On the contrary, in painting, whether in Paris, Tokyo or New York, there was an explosion of novelty. I felt at ease with painters. With Lichtenstein, I could go into his studio and watch him work, watch him putting his things together. He often worked like that: cutting things out before painting and assembling them, and looking for their exact place. It was very intriguing.

HUO This interest in your books among American artists continued after Pop Art. Artists like Sol LeWitt, Dan Graham and Mel Bochner referred to your works on many occasions, but you had no dealings with the next generation of artists.

ARG Yes. I am not really attracted by conceptual painting. What I like most in [Piet] Mondrian, for example, is the period when he is poised in-between. The fascinating thing is that gradually, from one year to the next, the cathedral becomes progressively more of an abstraction. That is what I find really gripping.

HUO Which museums do you like?

ARG I am not really all that fond of museums and I seldom visit them. There are too many paintings. I don’t know why, but I don’t like them. I sometimes go to exhibitions in New York, like the Mondrian show at MoMA [“Piet Mondrian: 1872–1944,” 1995]. It was very interesting to see all of his periods and especially the famous red church that turned abstract little by little. After seeing that show I realized that the period I find most absorbing is the one in which the objects can still be recognized—the church for example. In his later work, you get this steady deformation, with the forms taking over from the object represented, rather like what happens with Nicolas de Staël, whose landscapes are highly abstract, often because of the way the houses and the walls are painted. With Mondrian, it is the period when the painting is abstract but the original reference can still be recognized that interests me. His last period is interesting historically, but it does not move me.

HUO I read a text in which you talk about the passage from realism to reality, and about Nouveau Réalisme. Was there any contact between you and the French Nouveaux Réalistes?

ARG Yes, there was a real dialogue between us. Some of the Nouveaux Réalistes painters came to my office at the Editions de Minuit. Nothing came of it, although Daniel Spoerri’s text, Topographie anecdotée du hasard [An Anecdoted Topography of Chance, 1962],is I believe linked to that contact. I wanted Editions de Minuit to publish Spoerri’s book but the publishers decided it wasn’t their kind of stuff. I was very interested in his book at the time and we had a lot of discussions. There were many conversations with other artists, but no actual collaboration came out of them. Although I wrote for [Pierre] Alechinsky’s exhibition at the Jaeu de Paume, but this was not a dialogue. Alechinsky knew I wasn’t going to write a presentation of his painting. The curator showed me the exhibition plans, and I wrote a text of fiction. I was not the one who chose the pictures. I also wrote a text for Jasper Johns [“La Cible” (“The Target”), 1978] when his first show was mounted at the Centre Pompidou [“Jasper Johns,” Paris, 1978]. And one [“Araignée fantôme” (“Phantom Spider”), 1981] for a Jackson Pollock show [“Jackson Pollock,” Centre Pompidou, Paris, 1982] where the artist is obsessed by a spider’s web with a variety of things caught in it.

HUO The moment in which ambiguity occurs seems to move you the most.

ARG Yes, the moment of ambiguity is perhaps connected to the way my stories are built. My books and films are not abstract at all; they are stories that move.

HUO What about the cinema? How did your dialogue with Alain Resnais get started for L’année dernière à Marienbad?

ARG Resnais and I worked separately. It was agreed that I would only write and not take part in the shooting. He accepted me as a writer, whereas the other directors who wanted to make movies with me never allowed me to write the film. With [Michelangelo] Antonioni, for instance, everything was fine as long as we only talked vaguely about cinema, or about the kind of scenario we wanted to create. But as soon as I started talking to him about the film, saying things like, “At the beginning, with the first picture, you see on the screen . . . ” he would stop me immediately and say, “Ah no, you tell me a story and I’ll tell you what will be seen on the screen.” He would not agree to allow me to write the film; he just wanted me to tell him a story. So I said: “Look, all you have to do is pick up one of my novels, because I can’t do what you’re saying. When I think of a film, I don’t think about a story at all. I think about what will be seen and heard, about images and sounds—and I can describe them.” Resnais was ready to let me describe a film as if it already existed, shot by shot, with the cuts and editing and so on. He did change a few things, though, the soundtrack in particular. In the end it did help the spectator a lot.

HUO Were you involved in the actual shooting in any way?

ARG No, as I was in Turkey preparing L’immortelle [The Immortal One,1963].I was working on my own film. Resnais had simply recorded all the dialogue spoken by me, and then he played this back to all the actors, except Delphine Seyrig, whom he directed personally. The actors told me Resnais had a bizarre way of shooting. He would explain what they had to do and if they asked him why they had to do such and such a thing he would reply, “Listen, I don’t know what it means, you just do it because that’s how it’s written.” He took great care to abide by what was written. He even had architectural details constructed that I had envisaged as provisional and alterable. The statue, for example: I would have written a different text about a real statue if he had asked me to, but he had the statue made just as I described it. I’m not complaining, but the movie cost a great deal of money because of that. It had big repercussions, and Resnais lost a lot of money. It was much too expensive to build everything I had described.

HUO Very often you mention artists in your films.

ARG In effect, I very often involved painters in my films. You have seen La belle captive [The Beautiful Prisoner, 1983] so you see the roles played there by René Magritte and Edouard Manet: they are almost the basis of the whole film. Have you seen Glissements progressifs du plaisir [Successive Slidings of Pleasure, 1974]?It’s about doing an Yves Klein, but in red. And in Eden et après [Eden and After, 1970]. Of course, one has to see Nu descendant l’escalier [Nude Descending A Staircase, 1912] because of the editing effect: this naked woman coming down the stairs but going up again all the time. I think that my pictorial imagination gained the upper hand here. As I am a writer, people think I do films with literature but it’s exactly the opposite: if anything my films are primarily about painting.

HUO How did this navigation between different disciplines and different mediums come into your work?

ARG When I was young, I painted; I even thought I would be a painter. In reality I was not a painter at all because I did not paint enough and only for my own amusement. You really have to paint a lot to become a painter, unlike what some people think. I studied mathematics and biology, and I became an agronomist and worked for ten years in that capacity. One day I realized I had had enough of the life of laboratories and offices, and told myself I ought to start writing instead. Ten years later, it was a cinema producer—Eddie Mortel—who asked me to do a film. It was funny because that was a period when I didn’t have much of a public; I was famous but I didn’t have a large audience. The readers came afterwards. After Resnais, no other moviemaker let me describe a film, so I made films myself. When I said that there was no dialogue with Resnais, actually there was a dialogue—between his work and mine. In L’année dernière à Marienbad there are some very long traveling shots that I put in myself, but with Resnais in mind. As I had a good knowledge of what Resnais had done up till then—Hiroshima mon amour [1959] and his documentaries—I had his work in my head when I wrote the film, perhaps not as content but in any case as form. I did not want to take his traveling shots, so there are very few of them in my films. Resnais’s traveling shots are extremely interesting. There were also some things concerning Seyrig that interested me in Hiroshima. There was a dialogue, as if with a dead painter: not a real dialogue, but a dialogue with the work of the co-author.

HUO Was the Cinémathèque Française of [Henri] Langlois an important place for you?

ARG Never! I never set foot in the Cinémathèque. Certain films interested me. But the cult of Jean Renoir or Alfred Hitchcock is meaningless to me. And in any case, Langlois detested my films. What’s more, the only Nouvelle Vague filmmaker that interested me was Jean-Luc Godard. Resnais was not part of the Nouvelle Vague. [François] Truffaut, [Claude] Chabrol, [Eric] Rohmer and all that lot are of no cinematographic interest to me whatsoever.

HUO Numerous town planners and architects have talked to me about your books. What is the importance of the city for you?

ARG I not only thought of being a painter, but I had also thought of being an architect. Building a city. It is a pity that General De Gaulle, who suffered from delusions of grandeur, did not build some crazy city like Chandigarh or Brasilia. I have always been interested in cities that have really lived—there are traces of it in Topologies d’une cité fantôme [Topology of a Phantom City, 1976]—where different cities can be found superimposed on the same site. I have always been very interested in the marvel of cities that rise up suddenly, as completely new planned cities. One that really fascinates me is Leptis Magna in Libya. It is an astonishing place, built in the fourth century by the Romans and almost immediately buried under the desert, where it remained intact for centuries under the sand. It was a city on the sea with no other cities at all in the vicinity, and it was recaptured by the desert. It was Mussolini who uncovered it. Clearly it was very interesting for Mussolini, haunted by ghosts of Roman architecture.

HUO The idea of a vanishing city, like Angkor Wat.

ARG Yes. Un bruit qui rend fou [The Blue Villa, 1995], which was eventually shot in Greece, was initially to have been shot in the Angkor forest; I had prepared all the locations. Architects have often been interested in my work. I have been told several times that Daniel Libeskind in particular made some references to my books. I was also invited to Toronto, to a sort of avant-garde architectural center. I heard there that certain architects had claimed to build places inspired by my works.

HUO And which is your favorite city?

ARG That is the kind of question I find hard to answer. There are many cities I am very fond of. You’re from Zurich, aren’t you? I love Zurich. The loveliest city in central Europe is Prague, but during Communism, Prague fell into ruin bit by bit. It was very sad. Now it’s all been repainted and polished, but one now has the impression of a bogus city for tourists. I have no desire to live in Prague. I like San Francisco because of its topology. The new downtown Atlanta is also interesting. What is the name of that architect who invented external elevators in glass? John Portman. He showed me these new groupings. In Paris there are some achievements, such as the Centre Pompidou in this old district. It was a bizarre idea but it works very well; Les Halles maybe not so well. There are lots of cities that make me feel good, Bologna for instance. I have taught in Bologna. It is rare to find a university in the city center.

HUO Do you know Paolo Fabbri?

ARG Yes, very well. I also had a long conversation with Paolo Fabbri, in Bologna actually. And then there are lovely Baroque cities like Lecce, with no tourists. But even in tourist cities, the
tourists in Venice are very localized.

HUO Is there any unrealized project that you wish you had been able to do?

ARG No. There are some projects that were never realized, but often bits of these projects were incorporated into others, which were realized. There was the film called Le retour de Frank, but this was partly fulfilled in Un bruit qui rend fou. And La belle captive is to a large extent taken from another unrealized project called Piège à fourrure.There is so much intertextuality in my books and films that an unrealized project can still be found in what has been realized.

Interview published on "Interviews volume 2" by Hans Hulrich Obrist, Edizioni Charta 2010.

In the middle of Toscana: Siena, San Gimignano, Volterra and the Abbey of Saint Galgano

2011-04-22T01:24:00.000-07:00

San Gimignano, founded in 1199, is a Medieval Manhattan: 14 towers spire today, while at the beginning there were 72, as each noble family had its.

Siena: Piazza del Campo, Palazzo Comunale & Torre del Mangia, il Duomo, the maze of narrow streets of the Old Town.

According to legend, Siena was founded by Senio, the son of Remus, and in fact the symbol of the wolf suckling Romulus and Remus is present everywhere in the city, as in Rome. Siena was the first European city to ban traffic from the city center.

Forget the horses, Piazza del Campo is better when crowded of people sunbathing.

The Abbey of Saint Galgano is located 20 km S-O Siena.Built in 1218. The plague in 1348 led to the decline and the abandon by the cistercian community. The roof collapsed in 1781, in 1786 a lightning stroke the campanile.It had been deconsecrated in 1789 and then used as a farm.It is also famous because of the sward in the rock, skewered by the saint in 1180, when he decided to use it as a cross for praying instead of a weapon for killing.

Volterra:

Postmodernist Wedding Chamber

2011-04-15T14:25:00.000-07:00

Giorgio Morandi's Studio /2: Gianni Berengo Gardin

2011-04-12T08:02:00.000-07:00

Giorgio Morandi's Studio /1: Tacita Dean

2011-04-12T05:39:00.000-07:00

"At a certain point, standing in the tiny studio of Giorgio Morandi, re-installed recently in the old apartment in Bologna where he lived with his sisters for fifty years, I knew I had to make a decision. His objects were everywhere, grouped on the tables and under the chairs and gathered together on the floor. They were as recognisable to me as if they had belonged in the outhouses of my own family, and aged with us into comfortable familiarity: face powder boxes, conical flasks, vases of cotton flowers, gas lamps and oil cans, pots, jars and bottles, and containers whose function we no longer recognise. Were they of his time or had he scoured the flea markets himself looking for them? We have only ever known them with dust. Giorgio Morandi was the painter who could paint dust." Tacita Dean
Commissioned and produced by Fondazione Nicola Trussardi, Still Life and Day for Night were made in Giorgio Morandi’s studio on Via Fondazza in Bologna, where he lived and worked for 50 years.

texts taken from fondazionenicolatrussardi.com

12 angry men by Sidney Lumet

2011-04-05T07:59:00.000-07:00

Runtime: 96 min.; USA 1957.

with:
Martin Balsam (Juror #1)
John Fiedler (Juror #2)
Lee J. Cobb (Juror #3)
E.G. Marshall ( Juror #4)
Jack Klugman (Juror #5)
Ed Binns (Juror #6)
Jack Warden (Juror #7)
Henry Fonda (Juror #8)
Joseph Sweeney (Juror #9)
Ed Begley ( Juror #10)
George Voskovec (Juror #11)
Robert Webber (Juror #12)

"12 Angry Men" focuses on a jury's deliberations in a capital murder case. A 12-man jury is sent to begin deliberations in the first-degree murder trial of an 18-year-old Latino accused in the stabbing death of his father, where a guilty verdict means an automatic death sentence. The case appears to be open-and-shut: The defendant has a weak alibi; a knife he claimed to have lost is found at the murder scene; and several witnesses either heard screaming, saw the killing or the boy fleeing the scene. Eleven of the jurors immediately vote guilty; only Juror No. 8 (Mr. Davis) casts a not guilty vote. At first Mr. Davis' bases his vote more so for the sake of discussion after all, the jurors must believe beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant is guilty. As the deliberations unfold, the story quickly becomes a study of the jurors' complex personalities (which range from wise, bright and empathetic to arrogant, prejudiced and merciless), preconceptions, backgrounds and interactions.

Abstract taken from surrealmoviez.info

Annunciation by Simone Martini (1333)

2011-04-04T13:36:00.000-07:00

thanks to googleartproject.com

Arcachon Bay (Aquitaine, France)

2011-03-29T15:45:00.000-07:00

La Dune du Pilat

Located in the South of the Arcachon Bay, near Bordeaux.
The dune is 107 m high; it moves towards the forest 3m to 4.3m a year.
The migration of the dune is discontinuous, sometimes fast (10m between 1936 and 1937; 7m between 1965 and 1966, 7m between 1970 and 1971; 7.5m between 1988 and 1989, for example) and sometimes, very slow (0m between 1961 and 1962 for example).
This migration of the Great Dune has covered private plots of forest. The Great Dune overlaps about twenty private properties. Each year, the sand of the east slope of the dune covers 8000m2 of forest. At the North East part of the dune, a road was overlapped in 1987 after an avalanche of sand, and buried in 1991. A house was buried in 1936. At the South East of the dune, where was a glade, inhabitants of Bordeaux decided to have a villa built in 1928. Two years after in 1930, the sands began to invade the house in spite of the efforts of the occupiers. The house has completely disappeared over the sands in 1936.This progression toward East coincides with important marine erosion at the foot of the west side of this dune. From 1863 to 1989, the coastline is moved more than 1km toward East (7.5 to 8m/year). This erosion was more important to the South than the North.
Besides, a small airfield existed, to the West of the "La Corniche" Hotel (Hotel Oyana), which has completely disappeared, replaced by the South Channel of the Bay.

On the left: aerial view of the dune taken from the web.

Text taken from www.dune-pyla.com

Playgrounds by Cristina Crippa

2011-03-09T08:51:00.001-08:00

•••

www.cristinacrippa.it

The Night of the Hunter by Charles Laughton

2011-03-07T06:57:00.000-08:00

with: Robert Mitchum Shelley Winters Lillian Gish;

Runtime: 93 min; United States 1955.

The Night of the Hunter—incredibly, the only film the great actor Charles Laughton ever directed—is truly a stand-alone masterwork. A horror movie with qualities of a Grimm fairy tale, it stars a sublimely sinister Robert Mitchum as a traveling preacher named Harry Powell (he of the tattooed knuckles), whose nefarious motives for marrying a fragile widow, played by Shelley Winters, are uncovered by her terrified young children. Graced by images of eerie beauty and a sneaky sense of humor, this ethereal, expressionistic American classic—also featuring the contributions of actress Lillian Gish and writer James Agee—is cinema’s most eccentric rendering of the battle between good and evil.

Abstract taken from www.criterion.com

Sze Tsung Leong: Horizons

2011-03-07T06:35:00.000-08:00

Canale della Giudecca I, Venezia, 2007

Amman, 2007

Sangam II, Allahabad, 2008

Cuidrach, Isle of Skye, 2007

Castello I, Venezia, 2007

Dead Sea II, 2007

Skeithararsandur, Iceland, 2007

Exhibition on view at Yossi Milo Gallery, NY, until April 2nd.
Sze Tsung Leong was born in Mexico City, 1970
www.szetsungleong.com

Winter Aquapark by Stefano Cerio

2011-03-02T01:36:00.000-08:00

Exhibition on view at Spazio Forma, Milan, until March 20
www.cerio.it

"Slavoj Žižek: first tragedy then farce" by RSA Animate

2011-02-18T04:39:00.000-08:00

RSA Animate-First as Tragedy, Then as Farce from The RSA on Vimeo.

Tigrero: A Film That Was Never Made by Mika Kaurismäki

2011-02-12T03:31:00.001-08:00

with: Samuel Fuller, Jim Jarmusch.

Runtime: 63 min.; Brazil, Finland, Germany 1994.

In 1993, Sam Fuller takes Jim Jarmusch on a trip into Brazil's Mato Grosso, up the River Araguaia to the village of Santa Isabel Do Morro, where 40 years before, Zanuck had sent Fuller to scout a location and write a script for a movie based on a tigrero, a jaguar hunter. Sam hopes to find people who remember him, and he takes film he shot in 1954. He's Rip Van Winkle, and, indeed, a great deal changed in the village. There are televisions, watches, and brick houses. But, the same Karajá culture awaits as well. He gathers the villagers to show his old film footage, and people recognize friends and relatives, thanking Fuller for momentarily bringing them back to life.

Abstract taken from surrealmoviez.info

From the Life of the Marionettes by Ingmar Bergman

2011-02-07T09:01:00.000-08:00

with: Robert Atzorn, Heinz Bennent, Martin Benrath, Toni Berger, Christine Buchegger, Gaby Dohm.

Runtime: 104 min.; West Germany / Sweden 1980.

From the Life of the Marionettes is an unusually raw and explicit Ingmar Bergman drama, featuring two supporting characters from Scenes of a Marriage. Peter Egermann (Robert Atzorn), outwardly stable and well adjusted, suffers from depression, feelings of sexual inadequacy, and barely suppressed rage toward his wife, Katarina (Christine Buchegger), the latter eventually leading to the brutal rape and murder of a prostitute. Events are not presented in chronological order, but the film consists mainly of a number of scenes preceding the crime that painfully illustrate the Egermanns' marital discord, and a series of subsequent police interrogations involving psychiatrist Mogens Jensen (Martin Benrath), a friend of the Egermanns'; Katarina's business partner, Tim (Walter Schmidinger); and Peter's devastated mother (Lola Müthel).

Abstract taken from www.ingmarbergman.se

Mikalojus Konstantinas Ciurlionis (1875-1911)

2011-01-30T15:02:00.000-08:00

Forest, 1906

Serenity, 1903-1904

Creation of the World VII, 1905-1906

Summer, 1907

Creation of the World XI, 1905-1906

Rex, 1909

The knight prelude, 1909

Une semaine de bonté by Max Ernst

2011-01-26T14:47:00.000-08:00

THURSDAY

BLACK

ANOTHER EXAMPLE:

EASTER ISLAND

"Stones are full of bowels. Bravo. Bravo."

ARP

Max Ernst worked on this graphic novel between 1929-1934.

Bruce Haley

2011-01-16T08:16:00.000-08:00

from "Walks with my son" series

from "Thaipusam Ritual" series

from "Bangkok Dump" series

from "Forest Studies - Post Communist Project" series

from "Landscapes USA" series

from "Somalia" series

from "Croatia" series

from "Timber Industry" series

from "Burma" series

from "Industrial - Post Communist Project" series

from "Landscapes Etc - Post Communist Project" series

from "People - Post Communist Project" series

from "Burma Executions" series

Executions - note from Bruce Haley

[…] In the frontal photograph of this young man, 18 years of age, holding a bloody knife after taking the lives of two people, you will notice (aside from the aforementioned knife and the "Give me Liberty or Death" t-shirt) that he is missing his right eye… when he was 12 years old, Burmese government troops came into his village and killed his mother and father right in front of him… they then bashed him in the head with a rifle butt and left him for dead… the boy survived this ordeal, but suffered the loss of his right eye - and the loss of his childhood… he immediately fled his village and joined a guerilla army that was waging war against the government… by the time I photographed the executions, he was 18 and a member of a special commando unit… his superior officer told me that the young man often had to be restrained after an engagement with government troops, to keep him from sneaking to the corpses and eating body parts… when he carried out the executions, it was unimaginably savage and shocking - much of the worst of it I did not capture on film… he was obviously the horror, lost in a haze of hate and revenge… each stab of the blade was a way to get back for the loss of his parents, his eye, his childhood… A few months later, this same young man - who had both endured and caused so much suffering, was dead at 18, killed in a clash with government troops...

Texts and photographies taken from brucehaleypictures.com

Querelle de Brest by Rainer Werner Fassbinder

2011-01-08T03:58:00.000-08:00

with: Brad Davis, Franco Nero, Jeanne Moreau, Laurent Malet, Hanno Pöschl, Günther Kaufmann, Burkhard Driest.

Runtime: 105 min.; France / West Germany 1982.

Based on Jean Genet’s novel “Querelle de Brest” [1947 - an amazing book], this is Fassbinder’s last film.
The plot centres on French sailor Georges Querelle. True to his name (querelle means quarrel in French) he will steal, kill and betray - even those he loves. Upon his arrival in Brest, Querelle starts frequenting a bar and brothel run by Lysiane. Lysiane’s lover is Robert, Querelle's brother, with whom Querelle has a love/hate relationship. Querelle makes a drug deal with Lysiane’s husband Nono and then announces his intention of becoming Lysiane’s lover. According to the rules he first has to play a game of dice with Nono; if he wins he can become Lysiane’s lover but if he loses he first has to submit to Nono. Querelle loses deliberately …
Fassbinder's adaptation features surreal sets that underscore the dreamlike quality and abstraction of the novel, while the general look of the film is reminiscent of George Quaintance’s paintings. This is a controversial film, whose reception has varied from dismissal as incoherent and disjointed to praise as a major contribution to cinematic art, its most famous proponent being Marcel Carné, who resigned from the presidency of the jury of the 1982 Venice Film Festival after “Querelle” lost to Wim Wender's “Der Stand der Dinge”.

Abstract taken from: surrealmoviez.info

Cosmé Tura (1433-1495)

2010-12-18T02:43:00.000-08:00

Madonna col bambino - 1465-70 c.

Pinacoteca dell'Accademia Carrara, Bergamo

San Giorgio e la principessa - 1468-1469

Museo della Cattedrale, Ferrara

Sant'Antonio da Padova - 1480 c.

Musée du Louvre, Paris

San Ludovico da Tolosa - 1484

The Metropolitan Museum, New York

Sant'Antonio da Padova - 1485 c.

Galleria Estense, Modena

San Nicola da Bari - 1484

Musée des Beaux-Arts, Nantes

San Sebastiano - 1460-65 c.

Staatliche Museen, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin

San Domenico - 1480 c.

Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence

Pietà - 1455-1460 c.

Museo Correr, Venice

Compianto (Polittico Rovella) - 1475-79

Musée du Louvre, Paris

Madonna Col Bambino in Trono e angeli (Polittico Rovella) - 1475-79

National Gallery, London

Erato - 1458-62

National Gallery, London

Ascenseur pour l'échafaud by Louis Malle

2010-12-12T10:35:00.000-08:00

with: Jeanne Moreau, Maurice Ronet, Georges Poujouly, Yori Bertin, Jean Wall, Elga Andersen, Sylviane Aisenstein, Micheline Bona, Gisèle Grandpré, Jacqueline Staup;

Runtime: 88 min.; France 1958

A businessman (Julien Tavernier, played by Maurice Ronet), in love with his boss's wife (Florence Carala, played by Jeanne Moreau), plans a murder to look like suicide. This involves using a grappling hook and rope to enable him to climb up a floor without using the elevator. So far, so good. The boss is duly murdered, our "hero" climbs back down, takes the elevator down, and then realises he has left the rope dangling. Well, back up in the elevator, but alas, the building custodian shuts off the power, stopping the elevator between floors. Frantic (also an alternate title along with "Elevator to the Gallows"), our man tries to escape, but he is truly trapped.

Four days in Paris

2010-12-12T10:25:00.000-08:00

DAY ONE

• Montmarte, rue des Abbesses / place du Tertre / Basilique du Sacre Coeur

• Musée Gustave Moreau, 14, rue de La Rochefoucauld

• Opera / rue des Petits Champs / rue Etienne Marcel / rue Tiquetonne

• Parc du champs de Mars

DAY TWO

• Marché aux Puces d'Aligre (Place d'Aligre and neighborhoods)

• Musée d'Orsay, 62 rue de Lille • 'Île de la Cité: Pont Neuf / Cathédrale Notre Dame / Conciergerie

• Centre Pompidou, places Georges Pompidou • Bastille / rue de la Roquette / rue de Lappe

DAY THREE

• Musée du Louvre

• Place du Carrousel /Jardin des Tuileres / Place de la Concorde / Avenue des Champs Elysées

• Latin Quarter: rue Mouffetard / Mosquée de Paris / Pantheon

• St Germain: blvd St Germain / Eglise st Germain des Prés

DAY FOUR

• Cimitière du Père Lachaise

• Place des Vosges / Maison Victor Hugo

• Musée Picasso, 5 rue de Theorigny

Hotel suggested (low budget): Mary's Hotel, 15 Rue De Malte, 11. Bastille - République

Other venues: Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson (2 Impasse Leouis), Fondation Cartier pour l'Art Contemporain (261, blvd Raspail), Musée Eugene Delacroix (6 rue de Furstenberg), Musée de l'Orangerie (Jardin des Tuileries), Jeu de Paume (1, place de la Concorde), Promenade Plantée (av Daumesnil)

La ragazza con la pistola by Mario Monicelli

2010-12-03T06:54:00.000-08:00

with: Monica Vitti, stanley Baker, Carlo Giuffré, Corin Redgrave, Anthony Booth.

Runtime: 99 min; Italy 1968.

In La ragazza con la pistola (Girl with a Pistol), Monica Vitti is Assunta, a Sicilian girl seduced and abandoned by Vincenzo (Carlo Giuffrè) who then escapes to London in order to avoid a shotgun wedding.

Assunta's only chance to restore her lost honour is to find and kill her seducer.

Ciao Mario! (1915-2010)

Augmented reality

2010-11-16T14:09:00.000-08:00

Maurizio Cannavacciuolo

2010-11-13T14:30:00.000-08:00

Binocolo da teatro, 1995, oil on canvas, 70 x 90 cm

Processione, 1998, oil on canvas, 215 x 785 cm

Allegra aritmetica = 1,75, 1993, oil on canvas, 200 x 350 cm

Color Vs B/W, 2006, china ink on photo on canvas, 89 x 151 cm

Maurizio Cannavacciuolo: born in Napoli, Italy 1954

Accademia di Brera, Milan

2010-11-06T06:11:00.001-07:00

Le grand écart by Jean Cocteau

2010-11-06T05:46:00.001-07:00

Le grand écart/The great split (1923) is the first novel written by Cocteau, it anticipates the verve and originality of his most famous book, Les enfants terribles. Like the title suggests with the allusion to the final shape of the cancan, Le grand écart is a daring novel, rapid, and at the same time perfectly constructed.

Jacques Forestier, the young protagonist, has just reached the age where "the body and spirit make their own choices." Arrived from the provinces to Paris to continue his studies, he lives at a boardinghouse, the scene of a busy court of characters: the English Stopwell, champion of long jump, the charming and ambiguous Peticopain, the albino Maricelles , the Algerian Mahaieddine, who writes poems, inhaled ether and spends his nights with the dancer Louise. Soon in the life of Jacques breaks Germaine, an actress maintained by a wealthy banker who will be, with her beauty in ugliness, like "an acrobat balancing on death "to move towards a ruthless sentimental education.

The spirit of an era, Paris in the 20s, is caught by Cocteau's illustrations.

Sacra di San Michele, Turin

2010-10-27T08:40:00.000-07:00

The cult of the Archangel spread from the east and developed in Mediterranean regions in particular in Italy, where it arrived with the expansion of Christianity.
The oldest and most famous place of Archangel Michael worship in the west, that is the Sanctuary of San Michele in Monte Sant'Angelo, was erected on the promontory of Gargano in the fifth century.
Very soon this sanctuary became an important place for the spread of the worship of Archangel Michael in Europe and Italy and it represented the ideal model for all subsequent angelic sanctuary that were erected just "ad instar" of that on Gargano: the tops of the mountains, the hills, the high places, the deep caves were regarded from the beginning as the most appropriate place for the worship of angels and of Michael, in particular.
In 708 or 709, in France, on another promontory of the Normandy coast, it was consecrated to the Angel a sanctuary called of Mont Saint-Michel au péril de la mer, due to the phenomenon of high and low tides which made dangerous that place.
The Sacra is of Saint Michael because it is born and grows with its history and its facilities around the worship of St. Michael who came in Susa Valley in the V or VI century. Its location on high ground and in a highly suggestive scenario recalls immediately the two settlements of Archangel Michael on Gargano and in Normandy. Founded between 983 and 987 on the rocky spur of Mount Pirchiriano, it is in the middle of a route of pilgrimage of over two thousand kilometres that connects almost all of Western Europe from Mont Saint-Michel to Monte Sant'Angelo.
I suggest to visit the Sacra during the summer on the occasion of special events, because at the end of each concert , takes place special nightly tours with accompaniment by the Volunteers of the Sacra.

Address: Via alla Sacra, 14, 10057 S. Ambrogio (Turin), Italy

Taken from www.sacradisanmichele.com

Angelo Filomeno

2010-10-27T06:04:00.000-07:00

“Arcanum: Death and Vanity” (2006),

embroidery on silk shantung and golden tread stretched over linum, crystal and diamonds

I Am Feeling Cold, 2008
Embroidery on silk shantung with crystals stretched over linen
97.8 x 52.7 cm

“Death of Blinded Philosopher” (2006), embroidery on silk shantung

Angelo Filomeno. Born 1963, Ostuni, Italy Lives and works in New York

Henri-Georges Clouzot's Inferno

2010-10-23T04:08:00.000-07:00

Documentary directed by Serge Bromberg, Ruxandra Medrea

with: Romy Schneider, Serge Reggiani, Bérénice Bejo, Jacques Gamblin

Runtime: 100 min.; France 2009.

In 1964, Henri-Georges Clouzot chose Romy Schneider and Serge Reggiani, as the lead actors of L'ENFER (INFERNO). This enigmatic and original project, about a hotel manager who becomes possessed by the demons of jealousy, was given an unlimited budget and touted to be the cinematographic event of the decade. However, three weeks into filming, drama unfolds and the project aborted. The images, said to be incredible, were never shown.

Decades later, having uncovered some of the original rushes and screen tests, directors Serge Bromberg and Ruxandra Medrea have succeeded in recreating a new film from the remnants and brought it to fruition. Part original, part documentary and part reconstruction, HENRI-GEORGES CLOUZOT'S INFERNO shows L'ENFER as it was shot, and tells the emotional story of an ill-fated film project and of Henri-Georges Clouzot, who had been given free reign to his filmmaking genius.

Robert Doisneau (1912-1994)

2010-10-11T07:07:00.000-07:00

Le Manege de Monsieur Barre, 1955

on view at Spazio Forma, Milan until November 17

Les Diaboliques by Henry-Georges Clouzot

2010-10-07T03:58:00.000-07:00

with Simone Signoret, Véra Clouzot, Paul Meurisse, Charles Vanel, Alfred Fichet, Jean Brochard, Pierre Larquey, Michel Serrault, Thérèse Dorny, Noël Roquevert

Runtime: 116 mn.; France 1955.

The wife and mistress of a sadistic boarding school headmaster plot to kill him. They drown him in the bathtub and dump the body in the school's filthy swimming pool... but when the pool is drained, the body has disappeared - and subsequent reported sightings of the headmaster slowly drive his 'killers' (and the audience) up the wall with almost unbearable suspense...

taken from surrealmoviez.info

Punishment Park by Peter Watkins

2010-10-03T04:55:00.000-07:00

Runtime: 90 min.; 1970 USA

In a desert zone in southwestern California, not far from the tents where a civilian tribunal are passing sentence on Group 638, Group 637 (mostly university students) find themselves in the Bear Mountain National Punishment Park, and discover the rules of the ‘game’ they are forced to undergo as part of the alternative they have chosen in lieu of confinement in a penitentiary. Group 637 have been promised liberty if they evade pursuing law enforcement officers and reach the American flag posted 53 miles away across the mountains, within three days. Meanwhile, in the tribunal tent, Group 638 - assumed guilty before tried - endeavour in vain to argue their case for resisting the war in Vietnam. While they argue, amidst harassment by the members of the tribunal, the exhausted Group 637 - dehydrated by exposure to temperatures of 110 degrees Fahrenheit - have voted to split into three subgroups: those for a forced escape out of the Park, those who have given up, and those who are determined to reach the flag ...

taken from pwatkins.mnsi.net