The Inner Breath: where art meets mind

The Pit and the Pendulum... on the big screen

2008-08-03T01:10:00.000-03:00

Wow! I can't believe it! It's really true.
A movie on Edgar Allan Poe's The Pit and the Pendulum.
I've just got it and the movie's already playing!

Printing works

2008-06-17T22:56:00.002-03:00

For those of you who doesn't know, I'm a musician. I mean, I study all arts, but I already got my BM a year ago and music is where I dig (way) further. However, I've been climbing the mountain of digital visual art for some time now. From video to photomanipulation, I'm there.

And also for some time, I've been trying to find good online places to print my graphic artwork. It's been hard to find a good one, but it seems like I've found a brochure printing company worth checking! Wholesaleprintingdirect.com (oosh, big name there) has some pretty good deals there. Of course, the bigger the quantity of prints, the cheaper it goes. But I really think these guys have a cheap brochure printing. Maybe it's time to settle down with one and only company...

I'm still to get their products, but I've seen some good reviews about them out there. So if you need their printing services, don't forget to check their site, at least, for a quick pricing! It's always a nice feature to have available.

PS: sorry for disappearing. I had major disagreements with my pc's motherboard for these weeks. I'll be posting a lot more now.

Bookshelf-Staircase

2008-03-03T15:31:00.003-03:00

Since my last time at the bookshop, I realized that I had to organize my books somehow. And I know that most of you, art people, do like to read too (as you are reading this), so I thought of sharing this with you. It's one of the nicest solutions I've ever seen for bookkeeping and I wish I could do it at home.
This bookshelf-staircase makes it easier to keep your books, it gives you quick access to any book you'd like and it saves a lot of space from your bedroom or living room. You could also use plastic doors on every shelf (maybe except for the staircase itself) to keep them cleaner, although they'll be safe anyway. The good thing about it being as staircase is that you can reach the books in higher places and, of course, it keeps its original function: to reach another floor.
The bookshelf staircase was created by Levitate Architects, an English company based in London and Bristol. (via)

Jacques Resch

2008-02-24T15:02:00.008-03:00

[Les maisons qui volent - Jacques Resch]

Jacques Resch is a surrealist artist born in France in 1945, who now lives in Africa. His paintings have a remarkable resemblance to the styles of Gonsalves, Breughel and Dali combined, although not as straight forward as Gonsalves' works, not as crowded as Breughel's nor as wacky as Dali's. Resch's style is also influenced by Symbolism, especially on paintings like "Les pyramides" and "Le Diabolo".

Resch names his influences in style: "Bosch, Brueghel and Dali", which stand clear in his works. The first of them has Resch's full respect ('Bosch uses dreams to adventure into the interior of the human spirit'). Resch's works are influenced by modern technology and world politics.

Some of his works can be found for preview and sale on http://www.jacquesresch.com/.

RSS Feeding

2008-02-22T12:03:00.007-03:00

This is the first non-art post here. And I believe that most art blogs and sites don't talk about it either, which makes this post important.

If you're not web-savvy, you probably don't know what RSS is. Even if you are, there's the slight possibilty of not knowing. I've being using the RSS feature for over three months now (I know) and it really changed my opinion about it. RSS stands for "Rich Site Summary" or like some people like to call it: "Really Simple Syndication". RSS is good for a lot of reasons. Not only for readers but also for webpublishers.

It allows you to get the updates from a site on a small software (like FeedReader) or site (like Google Reader, BlogLines and My Yahoo). It works almost as an e-mail software. The good thing is: you don't have to visit every site you're interested in, because their updates are shown automatically to you. You don't have to provide your e-mail (although there is the possibility to subscribe by email too - here presented on the sidebar), you just have to add the feed url to your software/webbased reader. To do that, just click on the orange icon above.

Happy RSS-reading!

Books, books.

2008-02-11T17:10:00.000-02:00

My bookshelf is full. Once again. I did buy 18 new books and I'm not in a reading-mood. I'm reading one of my latest acquisitions now, slowly, crossing references and this research has been consuming a lot of the time I originally set to The Inner Breath.

Good things are: the new art site I've been programming is now coming together. I believe that it will be, at most, a month before it's up. Also, the new books on Symbolism, Absolute Music and What are the arts for, are great!

Here's my latest read: What Good are the Arts? - by John Carey
Great book with insights on modern acceptance of modern art.

Magic Realism: ideas and debates

2008-01-17T11:44:00.000-02:00

[Ladies of the Lake - Rob Gonsalves]

Looking around these days, I've found a very interesting page about Magic Realism. It's The Magical Realism Page, organized by Evelyn C. Leeper. There are tons of ideas and comments of what's Magic Realism, what's the difference between MR and Fantasy, vision on MR works. It's definitely a good site to check.

Rob Gonsalves

2008-01-09T15:03:00.000-02:00

[Still Waters - Rob Gonsalves]

Reader Oyvind has suggested some artwork in the previous message that reminded me of the art of Rob Gonsalves.

Rob Gonsalves (1959-) is one prolific artist from Toronto, Canada, with a large gallery of paintings and drawings that unite Magic Realism and a bit of Surrealism. During his childhood, Gonsalves was interested in drawing and learned perspective techniques, while starting to painting when he was about twelve years old. When Gonsalves was introduced to Dali, Tanguy, Magritte and Escher, he started painting his surrealist and "magic realist" images. After a great critique response in the 1990s, Rob Gonsalves has dedicated himself to painting full time.

I have found three nice galleries of his works on the web, which also sell them. Here they are:

Rob Gonsalves (official)
Progressive Art
HROSecure

Suggest a reading

2008-01-07T17:51:00.000-02:00

For quite some days, I've been searching the internet for sites (blogs or not) that share the same focus that The Inner Breath has. It's quite hard, though. Apart from the sites linked on the right panel, I couldn't find anything relevant. A lot of blogs on art news (as to 'new exhibits') but nothing regarding esthetics, consciousness and art. So, if you know a good site, share it here! Let's build a nice network!

You're all invited to share a reading, be it a blog, a full site, a book, an article, anything. :)

The Thin Ice: the two sides of water symbolism

2008-01-06T20:20:00.000-02:00

[Azure Fern - mArta Bevacqua]

For "The Thin Ice" (The Wall movie), Ulrick wrote "What he thought to be a warm, nurturing ocean turned out to be cold and sterile; the loving mother and the embracing life have become frozen and unyielding. The "sea may look warm" but it is, in all actuality, a layer of thin ice covering a frigid, aqueous landscape."

The thin ice that hides a "frigid, aqueous landscape" is a recurring image to the modern personality stereotypes. We all have some sadness hidden, still hurting, but we've still got our daily things to do, there's still rent to pay. Sometimes we think that one is quite happy for one's achievements, but there always is something hidden...

A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings

2008-01-06T17:34:00.000-02:00

A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings is a literary tale by Gabriel García Marquéz. The title sums it up. It's a tale about an winged old man that arrives in a town.

William Morris wrote about it in the Motley Vision, in the second part of his Magic Realism analysis.

Magic Realism

2008-01-02T13:24:00.000-02:00

So, what the hell is Magic Realism?

Magic Realism is an artistic movement in which supernatural events occur in reality. The main characteristic is that the event itself is not seen as magic in this setting (the characters don't see it as magic), it's just "another event".

The term was coined by art critic Franz Roh to describe imagery of an altered reality, and it was also used by Arturo Uslar-Pietri to describe the literary works of Latin American writers, like Gabriel García Marquéz and José Saramago.

Much of the imagery described as Magic Realism is quite famous, like the works of Salvador Dalí, Rob Gonsalves and René Magritte. Tim Burton (movie director and designer) touches Magic Realism in some of his productions, being Big Fish the most proeminent example.

Why should it matter?

It should matter because Magic Realism usually helps us understand how someone sees (evaluates) something. Much of what we hear about turn into an exagerated stereotype, which leads us to (unfulfilling) expectations about something. Watching Big Fish is a great way to understand how something that we don't believe can be real, taking the "too much" out off it.

Kevin J. Maroney brought up an interesting answer by García Marquéz: that there's no magic in One Hundred Years of Solitude". Maroney also states that "Gabo uses magical imagery to help us rediscover the real world".

I've been editing and publishing a lens on Magic Realism on Squidoo.

Hidden Workings of our Minds

2007-12-30T12:04:00.000-02:00

Do we really know what's going on while we're creating? Why do solutions come to us? How do they come? Jeremy Dean, from PsyBlog, talks about the unconsciousness of our creative processes. His blog post can be found here.

Also, I recommend exploring the PsyBlog. There are some very nice posts there.

Pink Floyd's The Wall (cinema)

2007-12-29T22:13:00.000-02:00

The Wall (movie, 1982) is the full development of Pink Floyd's The Wall (album, 1979). The movie is a result of the thoughts of Roger Waters (PF bassist at the time), Alan Parker (director) and Gerald Scarfe (cartoonist) combined. It's 84 minutes long.

Why should it matter?
The Wall is about society imposing consecutive stings of pain on individuals. As a result of painful events, Pink - the main character - isolates himself behind a barrier, inside the Wall. Mixing isolation, frustration, alienation, cyclic aspect of life, corruption and redemption, The Wall is one of the most well-written modern artworks.

Bret Urick has written the most famous analysis for the The Wall movie in his site, The Wall Analysis. Many suggestions and additions have been made since he originally posted his analysis, completing what's probably the most comprehensive (and larger!) analysis for the movie.

Here it is the movie online on Imeem.

Non-exhaustive movements listing

2007-12-29T19:10:00.000-02:00

Third and final list of art movements that will be eventually covered here.

- Dark Romanticism
- Magic Realism
- Modernism
- Surrealism and Neosurrealism
- Symbolism

Non-exhaustive ideas listing

2007-12-29T15:11:00.000-02:00

Here it is the listing for some of the topics that will show up in this blog eventually:

* Butterfly Effect
* Chaos Theory
* Cyclic Aspect of Life
* Creative Processes
** Unconscious Processes
* Mental Disorders
* Spiritual Beliefs
* Stimulated Reality

Non-exhaustive artworks listing

2007-12-29T15:04:00.000-02:00

I won't exactly cover every existing artwork, since every work of art is related to thoughts and/or feelings. But there are some works of art that co-relate a lot of different aspects of human beings and are artisticly astonishing. So here it is, a very first list of artworks:

Cinema:
A Beautiful Mind
Matrix
Stay
V for Vendetta
The Wall by Pink Floyd

Music:
Be - Pain of Salvation
The Dark Side of the Moon - Pink Floyd

Theater:
Arcadia - Tom Stoppard

This list will grow, as I write about the topics.

Welcome

2007-12-29T14:34:00.000-02:00

Welcome to The Inner Breath, a blog about artworks concerning psychologic events, feelings and related subjects. This is a space to help us all to understand human beings, by trying to get the spotlights off artworks and turn them to real people. I hope you enjoy the posts.