Things that Quicken the Heart

Heavenly Bodies - Robert Longo

noreply@blogger.com (Sofie (thingsthatquickentheheart)) — Sat, 03 Mar 2012 15:37:00 +0000

When I draw, I take it into me. I look at it,
it goes into every part of my body; it comes out of me.

Robert Longo

Robert Longo, Untitled (Saturn), 2007

Untitled (Home, Earth 3), 2005
Charcoal on mounted paper, 72 x 72 inches/182.9 x 182.9 cm

Untitled (Moon, 1865), 2005
Charcoal on mounted paper, 88 x 72 inches/223.5 x 182.9 cm

Untitled (Jupiter), 2006
Charcoal on mounted paper, 72 x 89 inches/182.9 x 226.1 cm

Untitled (Earth, for Zander), 2006
Charcoal on mounted paper, 72 x 84 inches/182.9 x 213.4 cm

Untitled (Hot Sun), 2006
Charcoal on mounted paper, 72 x 84 inches/182.9 x 213.4 cm

Untitled (Moon in Shadow), 2006
Charcoal on mounted paper, 72 x 84 inches/182.9 x 213.4 cm

Untitled (Neptune and Triton), 2006
Charcoal on mounted paper, 52 x 100 inches/132.1 x 254 cm

Untitled (Saturn), 2006
Charcoal on mounted paper, 72 x 122 inches/182.9 x 309.9 cm

Untitled (Starfield #4), 2006
Charcoal on mounted paper, 94 x 48 inches/238.8 x 121.9 cm

Untitled (Jackson's Nebula), 2006
Charcoal on mounted paper, 115 x 70 inches/292.1 x 177.8 cm

From the series "THE OUTWARD AND VISIBLE SIGNS..., 2006"

Artist's quote from this Interview

Animals in Art - Adam Fuss

noreply@blogger.com (Sofie (thingsthatquickentheheart)) — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 16:38:00 +0000

The aesthetic of me not being there

Adam Fuss, Untitled, From the series 'My Ghost', 2000

Adam Fuss, Untitled, 2009

Adam Fuss, For Allegra, 2009

Adam Fuss, Untitled, From the series 'My Ghost', 2001

Adam Fuss, Untitled, From the series 'My Ghost', 1999

Adam Fuss, For Allegra, 2009

Adam Fuss, For Allegra, 2009

Adam Fuss, Untitled, 2007

Adam Fuss, Untitled, 1998

Adam Fuss, Love, 1993

Adam Fuss, Untitled, 2003

Adam Fuss, Untitled, 2003

Adam Fuss, Medusa, from the series 'Home and the World', 2010

Adam Fuss, Untitled, From the series 'Home and the World', 2010

Adam Fuss, Alphabet, From the series 'Home and the World', 2010

The aesthetic of me not being there

"One doesn't have complete controle over the individual picture in the way one steps back. The force that makes the picture, the actual construction of the picture is not made by the hand it is made by the law of nature, the form that the nature takes. But one creates the situation that allows to take place. So there is a great degree of taken the helm. But there is also a situation where it is beyond, it is like another world. So there is no way you can do that. I like the aesthetic of me not being there, of the being no helm, of the looking like that there is no one there..."
(Artist's Statement: source)

Watch Shadow Catchers: Camera-less Photography - Adam Fuss

images found at artgallery, V&A, artnet, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Articles:

"So, we are not meant to learn anything from the work but are encouraged at every turn to be seduced by and appreciate the pure wonder and beauty of nature. In this work, as in alchemy, there are accidents that the artist has discovered and exploited." (source: NY Arts)

"Adam Fuss seems to realize that one of the challenges faced by the photographer uninterested in taking pictures of the world's endless complexity is to make the medium's physical properties and processes an exciting part of the final image. (...) One of their achievements is to give the essential wonder of photography -- its capacity for both literal translation and total transformation -- a primitive directness that is also startlingly contemporary, especially as enhanced by a large scale and brilliant color." (source: NYT)

Favorite Monsters - The Cat with Hands

noreply@blogger.com (Sofie (thingsthatquickentheheart)) — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 12:06:00 +0000

This is why poetic images are imaginings in a distinctive sense:
not mere fancies and illusions but imaginings that are visible
inclusions of the alien in the sight of the familiar.

Martin Heidegger, Poetry, Language, Thought

watch the video below

Movie Moments - Solaris, 1972

noreply@blogger.com (Sofie (thingsthatquickentheheart)) — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 11:53:00 +0000

Mankind does not move forward synchronously,
it stops and starts and goes off in different directions.
And only when scientific discoveries occur in the
course of technological development is there a
corresponding leap in man's moral development.

Andrei Tarkovsky

watch the video below

"Inner, hidden, human problems, moral problems, always engage me far more than any questions of technology; and in any case technology, and how it develops, invariably relates to moral issues, in the end that is what it rests upon. My prime sources are always the real state of the human soul, and the conflicts that are expressed in spiritual problems. And so I paid more attention to that side of things in my film, even though I did so unconsciously. It was an organic process of selection. I didn't erase the rest, but it somehow became more muted than the things that interested me most." A. Tarkovsky (source)

Solaris (Film poster Czechoslovakia)

Solaris (Film poster Poland)

Solaris (Film poster Japan)

image source

Black & White - Dogs

noreply@blogger.com (Sofie (thingsthatquickentheheart)) — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 14:01:00 +0000

When the Man waked up he said,
'What is Wild Dog doing here?'
And the Woman said,
'His name is not Wild Dog any more,
but the First Friend,
because he will be our friend
for always and always and always.'

Rudyard Kipling

Elliott Erwitt, New York City, 2000

Jacques-Henri Lartigue

Jacques Henri-Lartigue

Sarah Moon, Maria’s Dogs

Fay Godwin, Leaping Lurcher, 1973

Michel Vanden Eeckhoudt, Dogs, France, 1994

Matt Mahurin, Paris 1984

Josef Koudelka

Hideo Matsumoto, Dogs, 1996

Douglas Clark, Untitled (dog on road), 1980

Ron Evans, Farm Dog, Denmark, Arkansas, 1997

Albert Watson, Dogs in Car, Las Vegas, 2000

Norman Parkinson

August Sander, Village school teacher, Germany, 1921

Robert Doisneau, Le Fox-Terrier au Pont des Arts

André Kertész, Le chien concierge, 1926

Hans Mauli, Dog in Paris, 1959-64

Robert Doisneau

Alfred Eisenstaedt, Dog, 1937

Édouard Boubat, Saint-Germain-de-Pres, Paris, 1953

Elliott Erwitt, New York City, 1974

Giacomo Brunelli

Keith Carter, Isabel, 1995
more from this artist

Roger Ballen, The Chamber of the Enigma, 2003
more from this artist

Bruce Davidson

Anders Petersen

Shelby Lee Adams. Tyler & Sheba, 2001

Hiroshi Watanabe, Santa Rosa Farm, Ecuador, 2000

Hiroshi Watanabe, Dog on Wheels, San Sebastian, Spain, 2007

Toni Anzenberger

Ralph Gibson

Man Ray, Gertrude Stein´s poodle

Lowell Nesbitt, 'Echo' Triptych, 1974

Gilbert Garcin

William Wegman

William Wegman
more from this artist

Circles - Mandalas - Radial Symmetry IX

noreply@blogger.com (Sofie (thingsthatquickentheheart)) — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 11:44:00 +0000

With color one obtains an energy that seems to stem from witchcraft

Henry Matisse

Robert Mangold, Ring Image K, 2010

Robert Mangold, Circle In and Out of a Polygon 2 / 1973

Geneviève Claisse

Geneviève Claisse

Poul Gernes

Poul Gernes

Victor Vasarely

Victor Vasarely

Ron Waddams, We the peoples ..., 1984

Marcel Duchamp

Zanis Waldheims

Gregory Ito

Gregory Ito

Garth Weiser

Jasper Johns, Target with Plaster Casts, 1955

Jasper Johns, Green Target, 1955

Otto Treumann

Previous posts of this series
Circles - Mandalas - Radial Symmetry #01
Circles - Mandalas - Radial Symmetry #02
Circles - Mandalas - Radial Symmetry #03
Circles - Mandalas - Radial Symmetry #04
Circles - Mandalas - Radial Symmetry #05
Circles - Mandalas - Radial Symmetry #06
Circles - Mandalas - Radial Symmetry #07
Circles - Mandalas - Radial Symmetry #08

Animals in Art - Chris Marker's Petite Bestiaire

noreply@blogger.com (Sofie (thingsthatquickentheheart)) — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 15:37:00 +0000

Chris Marker lives in Paris and very rarely grants interviews.
When asked for a picture of himself, he usually offers
a photograph of a cat instead.

watch the video below

Chris Marker, Chat écoutant la musique (Cat listening to music)

The video [Chat écoutant la musique] is actually one of three parts to a ten-minute video anthology called Bestiaire. The middle piece deals with owls (cats with wings) and the final bit apparently shows animals in a zoo, gradually revealing their sad situation. Bestiaire itself was used by Marker as part of a larger video installation piece called Zapping Zone (Proposals for an Imaginary Television), in which Bestiaire and many other short video pieces (including excerpts from Marker’s longer films) played simultaneously on various TV screens stationed throughout the Pompidou Center. (source)

Part 2: Chris Marker, an owl is an owl is an owl
Part 3: Chris Marker, Zoo Piece

Quote above from Wikipedia

19th Century Stereographs

noreply@blogger.com (Sofie (thingsthatquickentheheart)) — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 13:52:00 +0000

Form is henceforth divorced from matter. In fact,
matter as a visible object is of no great use any longer, ...

... except as the mould on which form is shaped. Give us a few negatives of a thing worth seeing, taken from different points of view, and that is all we want of it. Pull it down or burn it up, if you please. We must, perhaps, sacrifice some luxury in the loss of color; but form and light and shade are the great things, and even color can be added, and perhaps by and by may be got direct from Nature.
source

Acrobats far from their mountain home --
grizzly bears in a street at Jacksonville, Florida.

Studio portrait of 3 dogs and a birdcage. 1865?-1905?

Dixon crossing Niagara below the Great Cantilever Bridge, U.S.A. 1895-1903

American Falls from below, Winter, Niagara, N.Y. 1860?-1895?

View of the Henry A. Paull, covered in ice. 1863?-1885? 1875

Brumidis Alligorical Painting's, in the Dome of the U.S. Capitol.

Italian section, Agricultural Hall. 1876

Wringing wet, Atlantic City, N.J. [1875?-1905?] 1897

Blossom from the Banana Tree. [ca. 1875] 1868?-1910?

From the ranch of Mr. Kercheval, Sacramento River, 203 pears, weight, 85 pounds. 1865-1873 1860-1900

Flashlight of wild moose in the Maine forest. 1870?-1910?

Found at NYPL's Stereogranimator, a tool for transforming historical stereographs from The New York Public Library's vast collections (42.240 items) into shareable 3D web formats.
Visit the gallery for more.

Movie Moments - Landscape in the Mist, 1988

noreply@blogger.com (Sofie (thingsthatquickentheheart)) — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 06:43:00 +0000

Don't worry. I will tell you our story.
In the beginning there was chaos ...

Landscape in the Mist a journey towards a mythical origin as two siblings, Voula and Alexander, attempt to find their unknown and essentially nonexistent biological father who, their mother evasively (and conveniently) explains, lives in Germany. Guided by daydreamed, unanswered missives to their eternally silent father, the children’s odyssey is an existential quest for ancestral identity and community. (source)

Theo Angelopoulos, one of the great European film-makers, died this week, aged 76, after a road accident. He'll be terribly missed!

watch the video below

Theo Angelopoulos, Landscape in the Mist, 1988

Alchemical manuscripts - Cabala

noreply@blogger.com (Sofie (thingsthatquickentheheart)) — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 11:12:00 +0000

When you have water, that is Mercury of the Air,
that is of the Stone and Air of Fire, that is Spirit
of Mercury and fire that is Mercury of the Earth,
that is of Luna, then you shall have the Art fully.

Aristotle

THE MANLY PALMER HALL COLLECTION OF ALCHEMICAL MANUSCRIPTS, 1500-1825
Box 17
"Cabala" ca. 1700
Anonymous. 34.5 x 26.5 cm. 9 leaves.
No text. Illustrations, watercolor. [71]
source

Manley Hall was born in 1901,in Peterborough, Canada, to William S. and Louise Palmer Hall. The Hall family moved to the United States in 1904 and lived for a time in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Manly Hall settled in Los Angeles in 1919.

As a young man he became interested in occult matters. He subsequently joined a number of societies, among them the Theosophical Society, the Freemasons, the Societas Rosecruciana in Civitatibus Foederatis, and the American Federation of Astrologers.

In 1922 Manly Hall wrote his first book on philosophy/religion, Initiates of the Flame. According to Hall, he began collecting works on mysticism and the esoteric sciences: "late in the fall of 1922, the plan for a comprehensive work on the symbolism of western mystical societies began to take shape in my mind. It soon became apparent that research facilities for such a project were not available in Southern California... The only answer was to contact antiquarian book dealers and elict their cooperation in the search for the items desired." The collection of books and manuscripts which Hall purchased, primarily in the 1920s and 1930s, became the basis for his own research and the cornerstone of the Philosophical Research Society's holdings.

source

Early 20th Century Illustrations from Japanese Children's Books

noreply@blogger.com (Sofie (thingsthatquickentheheart)) — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 13:05:00 +0000

I imagine that yes is the only living thing

E. E. Cummings

Okamoto Kiichi, Land of the Little Birds, 1929

Koga Harue, May Motifs, 1932

Koga Harue, Mid-winter Night's Dream, 1931

Onchi Koshiro, The Akebia Flower, words by Kitahara Hakushu, 1928

Hatsuyama Shigeru, Elephant and a Child, 1931

Hatsuyama Shigeru, Roasting Chestnuts, words by Yokose Yau, 1928

Kawakami Shiro, Pheasant Village, 1929

Kawakami Shiro, The Insects' Journey, 1927

Honda Shotaro, Working Children, 1928

Honda Shotaro, The Swallow's Architecture, 1923

Honda Shotaro, The Insects' Orchestra, 1922

Takei Takeo, Wood Crafts, words by Takei Takeo, 1928

Takei Takeo, Color Tape Crafts, 1927

Takei Takeo, Clay Crafts, 1927

Takei Takeo, Origami, 1927

Takei Takeo, Bean Crafts, 1927

Takei Takeo, Always Together, words by Mizutani Masaru, 1931

Takei Takeo, Mountain Climbing, 1929

Okamoto Kiichi, Jumping Rope, 1928

Okamoto Kiichi, Diving, 1928

Okamoto Kiichi, Seesaw, 1928

Image Source
The International Library of Children's Literature / National Diet Library

Movie Moments - Jean Painlevé

noreply@blogger.com (Sofie (thingsthatquickentheheart)) — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 17:24:00 +0000

Roll on, deep and dark blue ocean, roll.
Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain.
Man marks the earth with ruin,
but his control stops with the shore.

Lord Byron

One of the first to plunge underwater with a camera to bring the subaquatic world to the screen, maverick scientific documentary filmmaker Jean Painlevé (1902-1989) captured the throes of a male seahorse giving birth, the geometric choreography of crystal formation, and the mating habits of hermaphrodite mollusks. In a lifetime spanning nearly the history of cinema itself, Painlevé made over 200 films, including The Seahorse, Freshwater Assassins, The Vampire, and The Love Life of the Octopus. His lyrical and instructive animal behavior films set to avant-garde scores were much admired by Surrealist contemporaries such as Antonin Artaud, Luis Buñuel, and Jean Vigo.

source

watch the videos below

visit this beautiful website
Article by Scott Macdonald: Jean Painlevé: Going Beneath the Surface

related post

Marvels of Creatures and Strange Things Existing

noreply@blogger.com (Sofie (thingsthatquickentheheart)) — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 12:46:00 +0000

Kitab Aja'ib al-makhluqat wa Gharaib al-Mawjudat

literally "The Wonders of Creation and the Curiosities of Existence", or

Marvels of Creatures and Strange Things Existing

Merchant from Isfahan Flying

Kitab Aja'ib al-makhluqat wa Gharaib al-Mawjudat, literally "The Wonders of Creation," compiled in the middle 1200s in what is now Iran or Iraq. The vibrantly illustrated work is considered one of the most important natural history texts of the medieval Islamic world.

The author, Abu Yahya Zakariya ibn Muhammad ibn Mahmud-al-Qazwini (ca. 1203-1283 CE), is known simply as al-Qazwini. One of the most noted natural historians, geographers and encyclopedists of the period, he was born in the city of Qazwin in Persia and received much of his education in Baghdad, the cultural center of the region. Al-Qazwini wrote most of his works in Arabic. This beautifully illustrated Persian translation was created in 1537 in the Mughal Empire, corresponding to what is now Pakistan and northern India.

"The Wonders of Creation" is divided into two sections, focusing respectively on celestial phenomena, including the planets, stars, and angels, and the terrestrial world, including geography, ethnography, zoology, and botany. Al-Qazwini was primarily a compiler of information from different authors, both ancient and medieval, and made few original observations of his own. However, his flowing and understandable writing style and thoroughness on different topics made his texts popular and often quoted. (source)

Head of the Angels of the Sixth Sky and the Head of the Angels of the Seventh Sky

Rhinoceros

The Constellations of the Dog and the Keel

The Constellations of the Bull, the Twins and the Crab

The Constellations of Sagittarius and Capricorn

The Constellations of Andromeda and Perseus

Zebu

The archangel Gabriel

A map of the inhabited world

The artists who illustrated Arabic scientific works continued the Greek tradition of visually representing plants and animals. They based their drawings on traditional Greek representations such as those of the Vienna Dioscorides, that is, a Greek copy of Dioscorides’ De materia medica, ca. 513, currently preserved in Vienna, Austria. Often the illustrators improved on the original drawings by introducing new figurative elements. (source)

Two zodiacal constellations, Capricorn above and Aquarius below

Three constellations: above, the zodiacal constellation of Pisces, in the middle, the southern constellation of Cetus shown here as a harpy wearing a crown, and, below, the constellation of Orion depicted as a man carrying a sword in is left hand and a shepherd's staff in his right.

Six animal-headed demons or jinns

A simurgh - a monstrous mythical bird with the power of reasoning and speech. The
“Simurg” or “Angha,” is a sacred bird found in Persian, Greek, and Chinese fables,
and known in the West as the Phoenix.

Here you can browse a digital copy of the book

Image sources:
Islamic Medical Manuscripts at the National Library of Medicine
Wikimedia Commons
British Museum
British Library
Bridgeman Art Library

more info
Odyssey of Knowledge
Absolute Astronomy
NLM
Encyclopedia

Sunday Favorites

noreply@blogger.com (Sofie (thingsthatquickentheheart)) — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 15:11:00 +0000

Childhood is the sleep of reason

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

William Eggleston, Memphis, Tennessee, 1971

Nobuyoshi Araki, Untitled (Dolphin), 1996

Martin Usborne, Lost giraffe, Italian pool. Long way to Africa

Alec Soth, from the series Niagara

Clare Gallagher, Untitled, from the series Domestic Drift

Lights in the Night

noreply@blogger.com (Sofie (thingsthatquickentheheart)) — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 11:52:00 +0000

… the Stars
That nature hung in Heav’n, and fill’d their Lamps
With everlasting oil, to give due light
To the misled and lonely Travailer.

Arthur Rackham

I am starting this year with a new collection - similar to the series Things with Wings - called
Lights in the Night. Art from different times and cultures about the pleasures of exploring the
sky with its heavenly bodies as well as the urge to illuminate the dark hours between dusk
and dawn with fire and light.

James McNeill Whistler, Nocturne in Black and Gold The Falling Rocket, 1874

Jean-François Millet, Starry night, 1851

Matthew Cusick, Leviathan, 2008 (Maps, illustrated bible, ink, on panel)

Tomomi Miyano, Night Fishing, 2005

Fumiaki Fukita. Exploding Star, 1966

Leonid Meteor Storm over Niagara Falls, 1833

James Glaisher, Travels in the Air, 1871

Oswald Achenbach, Fireworks in Naples

Edward Middleton Manigault, The Rocket, 1909

Lucien Lévy-Dhurmer, Feu d’artifice a Venise, 1917

Takahashi Hiroaki (Shôtei), Fireworks Shubinomatsu (Okawa Shubinomatsu),
(literally “Pine Tree at Okawa River”), Early 1930’s

Jun Kumaori, Amayadori

John Salminen, Morning Fog

John Singer Sargent, Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose, ca. 1885-86

John Singer Sargent, Sketch for "Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose" (see above)

Mian Situ, Preparing For Festival

Thorolf Holmboe, Still Life, 1907

Takahashi Hiroaki (Shôtei), Street Singers (Ukiyobushi)

Warwick Goble, Illustration from The Star Lovers

Charles Folkard, Robin Goodfellow

Kiyochika, May Night at Kudanzaka

Edward Hopper, Blue Night, 1914

Ferdinand du Puigaudeau, Breton Girls with Chinese Lanterns, 1896

Maxfield Parrish, The Lantern Bearers, 1910

Illustration by Arthur Rackham for Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens
Written by J.M. Barrie. First published in 1906

Maurice Prendergast, Festa del Redentore, ca.1899

Ramón Casas, Atelier Interior after a party, 1883

Movie Moments - Lotte Reiniger

noreply@blogger.com (Sofie (thingsthatquickentheheart)) — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 13:00:00 +0000

Happy Holidays!

watch the videos below

Download this movie (mp4) from archive.org

Lotte Reiniger (1899-1981), Biography and movie selection, British Film Institute

The Art of Lotte Reiniger

Tsuki Hyakushi - 100 Aspects of the Moon

noreply@blogger.com (Sofie (thingsthatquickentheheart)) — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 12:01:00 +0000

Whore and monk, we sleep
under one roof together,
moon in a field of clover

Bashu

A huge thank you to all my followers and subscribers.
You are amazing and I couldn't do this without you!

Tsuki Hyakushi - 100 Aspects of the Moon (1885 - 1892) by Yoshitoshi Tsukioka

The moon was one of the preferred motifs of Yoshitoshi and it can be found in many of his designs. But the moon is not really the leitmotiv of this series. The common bond of all 100 prints is subject to speculation and individual interpretations. Stevenson sees "individuals and their emotions" as the leitmotiv. Scenes from Japan's and partly from China's history and the world of Japanese mythology are the majority of the designs. (source)

Like most of his contemporaries, Yoshitoshi Tsukioka (1839-1892) was fascinated by the world elsewhere, but as the decades passed he became increasingly concerned at how much his countrymen had lost by abandoning their traditions. He therefore took as subjects for his prints stories from Japan’s glorious and colorful past. Though they looked backwards in the sense that they illustrated historical events, Yoshitoshi’s prints were revolutionary in their representation of individual human emotion and in their psychological sensitivity. The supreme example is his last great series of prints, Tsuki hyakushi, One Hundred Aspects of the Moon. (source)

Image source
Complete online reference
more infos

Black & White - Famous People with Animals

noreply@blogger.com (Sofie (thingsthatquickentheheart)) — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 15:13:00 +0000

We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals.

Immanual Kant

Frida Kahlo

Audrey Hepburn

Kim Novack

Leonor Fini

John Huston (und Montgomery Clift)

Errol Flynn

Amanda Plummer

Patty Smith

Frank Zappa

Paul Newman

Roger Waters

Samuel Beckett

Tilda Swinton

Marlon Brando

Marlon Brando (photographer Murray Garrett?)

Viggo Mortensen

Brigitte Bardot

Bette Davis

Catherine Deneuve

Maryilyn Monroe

David Bowie

John Lennon

David Foster Wallace

Edward Gorey at home in Yarmouthport, Mass., 1992, Photo © Steve Marsel Studio Inc.

Ernest Hemingway

Gustav Klimt

Gertrude Stein, 1944 (photographer Carl Mydans, LIFE)

Henry Matisse

Howard Phillips Lovecraft

Jean-Paul Sartre

Marcel Duchamp

Philipp K. Dick

Jean Cocteau und Jean Marais

Jean Cocteau

Stanley Kubrick

Heinrich von Kleist, On the Puppet Theater

noreply@blogger.com (Sofie (thingsthatquickentheheart)) — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 14:58:00 +0000

Paradise is locked and bolted and the Cherub is behind us. We must make a journey around the world, to see if a back door has perhaps been left open

Heinrich von Kleist (18 October 1777 – 21 November 1811)

Heinrich von Kleist (1777-1811)

On the Puppet Theater

While passing the winter of 1801 in the town of M-- I chanced one evening, in the public garden, to meet Mr. C., who had lately been appointed chief dancer at the Opera in that town, and was enjoying uncommon success with his audiences. I said how surprised I had been to notice him more than once at a puppet theater which had been hammered together in the marketplace, to entertain the crowds with little mock heroic dramas, interspersed with songs and dances.

He assured me that the pantomime of these puppets gave him much pleasure, and suggested in no uncertain terms that any dancer who wished to improve his art might learn all sorts of things from them.

Since the remark, and his tone of voice, implied something more than a passing fancy, I sat down with him, the better to hear the grounds on which he would support so strange an assertion.

He asked if I had not found certain movements of the puppets, particularly the smaller ones, very graceful when they danced.

I could not deny this fact. One group of four peasants, doing a round dance in rapid tempo, could not have been painted more prettily by a Teniers.

I inquired about the mechanism of these figures and how it was possible, without myriad strings on the fingers, to control the separate members and their tie points as the rhythm of their movements or dances required.

He answered that I must not imagine that each member, in the various motions of the dance, had to be placed and pulled individually by the puppeteer.

Each movement, he said, had its center of gravity; it would suffice to control that center, on the inside of the figure; the limbs, which are really nothing but pendulums, follow of themselves, in a mechanical way, without further aid.

He added that this movement was a very simple one, that even when the center of gravity was directed in a straight line the limbs began to describe curves; and that often, when shaken in a quite random way, the whole puppet assumed a kind of rhythmic motion that was very much like a dance.

This observation seemed to shed some light at last on the pleasure which he had claimed to find in the marionette theater. But I was still very far from suspecting the conclusions that he was to draw from this.

I asked him if he believed that the mechanic who controlled these puppets must be a dancer in his own right, or at least have some conception of the Beautiful in the dance.

He answered that we were not to suppose, simply because an operation seemed easy from the mechanical point of view, that it could be performed without a certain sensitivity.

The line that the center of gravity must describe is indeed very simple and, as he believed, in most cases straight. When it happens to be curved, the law of its curvature seemed only of the first, and at most of the second order; and even in the latter case only elliptical, which form of movement happens to be the natural one for the extremities of the human body (because of the joints) and which would demand no great skill on the part of the puppeteer to describe.

This line, however, considered from another point of view, is something very mysterious. For it is nothing less than the path of the dancer's soul, and he doubted whether it could be found except by the puppeteer transposing himself into the center of gravity of the marionette; or, in other words, by dancing.

I replied that I had always thought this activity something quite mindless, rather like turning the crank on a hand organ.

"By no means," he answered. "On the contrary, the relation of his finger movements to the movements of the puppets attached to them is something quite precise, rather like the relation of numbers to their logarithms or asymptotes to their hyperbola."

But he believed that even this last fraction of mind, to which he had just now referred, could indeed be removed from the marionettes, their dance transposed wholly into the realm of mechanical forces, and, just as I had imagined, produced by means of a crank.

I expressed my amazement that he should dignify with serious consideration this toy version of a high art, contrived for the populace. Not only did he believe it capable of higher development, he seemed indeed to be directing his own thoughts to that end.

He smiled, saying he dared assert that if a mechanic would construct a marionette according to his specific requirements, he could, by means of it, present a dance such as no other accomplished dancer of the time, not even Vestris* himself, was ever likely to achieve.

"Have you ever heard " he asked, when I silently regarded the floor, “of those mechanical legs that English craftsmen manufacture for hapless accident victims?”

I said no, I had never set eyes on such things.

"I wish you had," he replied, "for if I tell you that these unfortunate people manage to dance with them, I am almost afraid you will not believe me. Nor is it an ordinary dance! The range of their movements is of course limited; but within it they attain to a lightness, a serenity, and a gracefulness that must amaze every thinking person. "

I offered, joking, that he had found his man. For the same craftsman who was able to construct those remarkable limbs could doubtless construct a whole puppet to meet his requirements.

"How," I asked when he looked somewhat embarrassed, "how would these requirements, which you would expect of his skill, be fulfilled?"

"By nothing that is not to be found here already," he replied. "Balance, agility and ease – but each in a higher degree, and especially a more natural coordination of the center of gravity."

"And the advantage of such a puppet over living dancers?"

"The advantage? First of all, my good friend, a negative one: namely that it would be incapable of affectation. For affectation, as you know, appears when the soul (vis motrix)** is located at any point other than the center of gravity of a movement. Now because, with his wires and strings, it is this very point and no other that the puppeteer controls, all remaining members are, as they should be, dead, pure pendulums, which follow the basic law of gravity -- a marvelous quality, which we look for in vain in most of our dancers.

"Just observe Madame P–," he continued, "when she plays Daphne, and pursued by Apollo looks back over her shoulder: her soul settles in the vertebrae of the small of her back; she bends over as though about to break in two, like some naiad from the school of Bernini.† Observe the young dancer F– when, as Paris, he stands with the three goddesses and extends the apple to Venus: his soul (in a manner fearful to behold!) actually settles in his elbow.

"Such blunders," he added, interrupting himself, "are unavoidable, since we have eaten of the tree of knowledge. But Paradise is locked and bolted and the Cherub is behind us. We must make a journey around the world, to see if a back door has perhaps been left open."

I laughed. Certainly, I thought, the intellect cannot err where none is present. But feeling that he had more to say, I asked him to continue.

"In addition," he said, "these puppets have the advantage of countergravity. For they know nothing of the inertia of matter, which of all properties is the most obstructive to the dance: for the force that lifts them into the air is greater than that which pulls them to the ground.

What would our dear Madame G– not give to be lighter by sixty pounds, or for a counterweight of this size to help her with her entrechats and pirouettes? Puppets, like elves, require the ground only to touch on, and by that momentary obstruction to reanimate the spring of their limbs; while we require it to rest on, and to recover from the exertions of the dance: a moment which is clearly not dance in itself, and with which there is nothing to be done except to make it disappear by all possible means.

I answered that, however skillfully he might propose his paradox, he could never make me believe that more charm might inhere in a mechanical doll than in the structure of the human body.

He replied that in this it was absolutely impossible for the human being to compete with a puppet. Only a god, on this field of contest, could prove a match for matter; and here is where both ends of the ring-shaped world interlock.

I grew more and more amazed, and hardly knew how to answer such strange assertions.

It would seem, he replied, taking a pinch of snuff, that I had not read the third chapter of the Book of Genesis with care; and to be unacquainted with this first stage of human culture is to be incapable of discussing the later stages, still less the last of all.

I said that I knew only too well the disorders that consciousness could produce in the natural grace of humankind. A young man of my acquaintance, before my very eyes, so to speak, and through a mere remark, lost his innocence; and in spite of every imaginable effort could never regain the Paradise of that condition. But what conclusion, I wanted to know, could be drawn from this?

"About three years ago," I related, "I was swimming with a young man over whose physical form a marvelous grace seemed to shine. He must have been just sixteen or so, and only the first signs of vanity, induced by the favors of women, could be seen, as it were, in the farthest distance. It so happened that shortly before, in Paris, we had seen the famous statue called the Spinario, the youth removing a thorn from his foot – copies of it are familiar and to be found in most German collections. A glance in a large mirror recalled it to him at a moment when, in drying himself, he happened to raise his foot to a stool – he smiled and mentioned the discovery he had made. I indeed had noticed it too in the very same instant, but either to test the self-assurance of the grace with which he was endowed, or to challenge his vanity in a salutary way, I laughed and said he was seeing phantoms. He blushed and raised his foot a second time to prove it to me, but the attempt, as might easily have been foreseen, did not succeed. Confused, he raised his foot a third and fourth time; he must have raised it ten times more: in vain! He was unable to produce the same movement again. And the movements that he did make had so comical an effect that I could hardly suppress my laughter.

"From that day, as though from that very moment, an inconceivable transformation began in that young man. He would stand whole days before the mirror; one charm after the other fell from him. An invisible and incomprehensible force like an iron net, seemed to spread over the free play of his gestures, and when one year had passed not a trace could be detected of that sweetness which had once so delighted the sight of all who surrounded him. There is still a person living who was witness to this strange and unfortunate event and who can confirm it word for word as I have told it. "

"At this opportunity," said Mr. C. amicably, “I must tell you another story, and you will see the connection.”

"Once, on a journey to Russia, I happened to be visiting the estate of Herr von G–, a Livonian nobleman, whose sons at the time were very keen on their fencing practice. The elder of them especially, just home from the university, was playing the great virtuoso, and one morning in his room offered me a foil. We fenced, but as it turned out I was more than a match for him, his very zeal compounded his perplexity; I hardly made a thrust that failed to hit, until finally his foil went flying into the corner. Half joking, half dashed, he conceded as he picked up his foil that he had met his master, but so must every living being, and now he wished to introduce me to mine. With this, both brothers laughed aloud and called, 'Come with us! Down to the woodshed!' And taking me by the hand they led me to a bear that their father was having raised on the estate.

"The bear, as I in my surprise approached him, reared up on his hind legs, his back against the post to which he was chained, his right paw poised for the strike, and looked me in the eye: that was his fencing posture. I thought I must be dreaming to find myself faced with such an opponent, but Herr von G– called, 'Strike! Strike! And try to hit him!' Recovering from my surprise somewhat I made a lunge; the bear made a very short movement with his paw and parried my thrust. I tried fooling him with feints – the bear did not move. With spontaneous agility I lunged once more, and would surely have touched any human breast; the bear made a very short movement with his paw and parried my thrust. I was now almost in the same condition as the young Herr von G– been. The earnestness of the bear was robbing me of my composure, thrusts and feints followed on one another, I was dripping with sweat: in vain! It was not merely that the bear, like the world's leading fencer, parried every one of my thrusts, but to my feints he reacted not at all (a feat that no fencer anywhere could match). Eye to eye, as though he could read my very soul, he stood with his paw poised for the strike, and if my thrusts were not in earnest he simply did not move.

"Do you find my story believable?"

"Perfectly!" I cried, with delighted applause. "It is so plausible, I would believe it of any stranger, and so much the more of you!"

"Now then, my good friend, you are in possession of all you require to understand my point. We see how, in the organic world, as reflection grows darker and weaker, grace emerges ever more radiant and supreme. – But just as two intersecting lines, converging on one side of a point, reappear on the other after their passage through infinity, and just as our image, as we approach a concave mirror, vanishes to infinity only to reappear before our very eyes, so will grace, having likewise traversed the infinite, return to us once more, and so appear most purely in that bodily form that has either no consciousness at all or an infinite one, which is to say, either in the puppet or a god."

"That means," said I, somewhat amused, "that we would have to eat of the tree of knowledge a second time to fall back into the state of innocence."

"Of course," he answered, "and that is the final chapter in the history of the world."

___________
* Gaetan Vestris (1729-1808). The leading danseur of the Paris Opera, and perhaps the most famous of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
** vis motrix "the moving force."
† The Baroque style, of which Bernini was the dominant practitioner in Italian Sculpture, was in low repute in the Neoclassical and Romantic periods and considered frivolously ornate and exaggerated, removed from both true art and true nature.

source

Today is the bicentenary of poet, dramatist and short story writer Heinrich von Kleist's death. He was born on October 18th, 1777 and died November 21st, 1811 by commiting suicide - he shot himself together with his friend Henriette Vogel, who was fatally ill. Both where only 34 years old.

Black & White - Hands III

noreply@blogger.com (Sofie (thingsthatquickentheheart)) — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 14:01:00 +0000

Please leave your fingerprints

Maya Deren and Marcel Duchamp, The Witch’s Cradle, 1943

Imogen Cunningham, Hand Weaving with Hand, 1945

Paul Nougé, Le bras révélateur, 1929-1930

Elliott Erwitt, Jacksonville, Florida, 1968

Ralph Gibson - The Somnambulist, 1968

Ralph Gibson, Baby's Hand with Guitar, 1960 - 1961

John Gutmann, The Cry, 1939

Dora Maar, Sans Titre (1934)

Elliot Burke, Hands

Tono Stano, 1980

Jindřich Štyrský, Untitled/from On the Needles of These Days,c.1934-1935

Alek Lindus

Robert Mapplethorpe, Hand in Fire, 1985

Lotte Meitner-Graf, Woman’s Hand with Cigarrete

Claude Cahun, Untitled, ca. 1939

Mario Hugo

Man Ray, Hands painted by Picasso, 1935

Horst P. Horst, Hands, 1941

Michal Macku

Ben Cauchi, Dead Arm, 2006

Robert Mapplethorpe, Hand in Fire, 1985

Roger Catherineau, La Vitre (The Window Pane), 1954

John Rivers Coplans

Richard Serra, Hand Catching Lead, 1968

Herbert Bayer, Lonely Metropolitan, 1932

Erwin Blumenfeld, Solarized Hands, 1944

Man Ray, L’ouf et Le Coquillage, 1931

Man Ray, Hands, 1925

Man Ray, The Hands of Antonin Artaud, 1922

Man Ray, The Hands of Marcel Duchamp, c.1920

Related posts

Black & White - Hands I
Black & White - Hands II

3 short documentaries about vanishing, loss and preservation.

noreply@blogger.com (Sofie (thingsthatquickentheheart)) — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 12:20:00 +0000

A Factory - A Museum - A Collection

watch the videos below

Crisis by Paul Mignot.
Due to the financial crisis , production at the Rokycany factory has fallen by 70 percent since October 2008. From a workforce of 1280 people...124 remain...

Typeface (Trailer) by Justine Nagan.
In a time when people can carry computers in their pockets and watch TV while walking down the street, Typeface dares to explore the twilight of an analog craft that is freshly inspiring artists in a digital age. The Hamilton Wood Type Museum in Two Rivers, WI personifies cultural preservation, rural re-birth and the lineage of American graphic design. At Hamilton, international artisans meet retired craftsmen and together navigate the convergence of modern design and traditional technique.

The Archive by Sean Dunne.
Paul Mawhinney was born and raised in Pittsburgh, PA. Over the years he has amassed what has become the world's largest record collection. Due to health issues and a struggling record industry Paul is being forced to sell his collection.

Sunday Favorites

noreply@blogger.com (Sofie (thingsthatquickentheheart)) — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 16:25:00 +0000

Let us again pretend that life is a solid substance, shaped like a globe,
which we turn about in our fingers. Let us pretend that we can make out
a plain and logical story, so that when one matter is despatched—love for
instance—we go on, in an orderly manner, to the next.

Virginia Woolf, The Waves

Peter Lindbergh, Malgosia Bela, 2008

Saul Leiter, Horse, 1958

Angela Bacon-Kidwell, Devotion, 2005

Photographing the Photographer

noreply@blogger.com (Sofie (thingsthatquickentheheart)) — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 12:24:00 +0000

Who photographs the photographer?

André Kertész, Self-portrait, 1927

Hippolyte Bayard, Autoportrait en noyé/Self Portrait as a Drowned Man, 1840

Ilse Bing, Self portrait with staccato, NY, 1967

Ilse Bing, Self-Portrait in Mirrors, 1931

Wally Elenbaas - Autoportrait, 1938

Man Ray, Self-Portrait

Diane Arbus, Self-portrait, 1945

Vivian Maier, Self-portrait with mirror

Vivian Maier, Untitled, Self Portrait with Multiple Reflections, 1953

Irving Penn, Self-portrait

Ralph Eugene Meatyard, Self Portrait

Ré Soupault, Self Portrait, 1939 Tunis

Willy Ronis - Self-portrait with flash, 1951

Robert Doisneau, Self Portrait

Helmut Newton, Self-portrait, Lenox Hill Hospital, New York City, 1973
(click for original-version - nsfw)

Édouard Boubat, Self-portrait with his muse and first wife, Lella

Immogen Cunningham, Self-portrait

Andreas Feininger: Self-Portrait, 1941

Cecil Beaton, Self-Portrait

Robert Mapplethorpe, Self-portrait as devil, 1985

Jeanloup Sieff, Self-portrait, 1995

Nan Goldin, Self-portrait on the train (Boston - New Haven) 1997

Andy Warhol, Self-portrait

William Eggleston, Self-Portrait in a Photo Booth, ca. 1975

William Eggleston with his camera (photographer unknown)

Berenice Abbott (by Hank O’Neal, NYC, 1979)

Ernst Haas (by Dan Budnick, 1964)

Ernst Haas (photographer unknown)

Alfred Stieglitz (photographer unknown)

Alfred Stieglitz Photographing on a Bridge, ca. 1905 (photographer unknown)

Henri Cartier-Bresson, 1947 (by Arnold Newman)

W. Eugene Smith (photographer unknown)

Ralph Gibson (photographer unknown)

Note: "pnotographer unknown" means, the person who took the picture
is curently unknown to me. But I'll continue my research and will add lacking
credits to this post, as soon as I find them. If you know any of the missing
sources, please don't hesitate to let me know.

Animation Short - When The Day Breaks

noreply@blogger.com (Sofie (thingsthatquickentheheart)) — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 17:12:00 +0000

watch the video below

When The Day Breaks, Animation short, Canada 1999
Directors: Amanda Forbis, Wendy Tilby

Moon

noreply@blogger.com (Sofie (thingsthatquickentheheart)) — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 12:37:00 +0000

you'll be beautiful in my manner

John Adams Whipple, View of the Moon, Feb 26, 1852 (Daguerreotype )

__________________________

The Moon’s Favors

Meanwhile, in the expansiveness of her joy,
the Moon filled all of the room like a phosphoric atmosphere,
like a luminous poison; and all of that living light thought and said:
“You will be eternally subject to the influence of my kiss.
You will be beautiful in my manner.

You will love what I love and who loves me:
water, the clouds, silence, and the night; the immense, green sea;
formless and multiform water; the place where you will not be;
the lover you will not know; monstrous flowers;
perfumes that make you delirious; cats who swoon on pianos,
and who moan like women, with a hoarse, gentle voice!

Charles Baudelaire

__________________________

Galileo Galilei
Sidereus Nuncius Magna, Longeque Admirabilia Spectacula Pandens,
Suspiciendaque Proponens Unicuique [The great starry messenger], 1610

William Blake, The Gates of Paradise, 1825

Animation short by Shulamit Serfaty (Hebrow with english subs)

Transparent medusas rose to the sea's surface, throbbed there a moment, then flew off, swaying toward the Moon. Little Xlthlx amused herself by catching them in midair, though it wasn't easy. Once, as she streched her little arms out to catch one, she jumped up slightly and was also set free. Thin as she was, she was an ounce or two short of the weight necessary for the Earth's gravity to overcome the Moon's attraction and bring her back: so she flew up among the medusas, suspended over the sea. She took fright, cried, then laughed and started playing, catching shellfish and minnows as they flew, sticking some into her mouth and chewing them. We rowed hard, to keep up with the child: the Moon ran off in her ellipse, dragging that swarm of marine fauna throught the sky, and a train of long, entwinded seaweeds, and Xlthlx hanging there in the midst. Her two wispy braids seemed to be flying on their own, outstreched toward the Moon; but all the while she kept wriggling and kicking at the air, as if she wanted to fight that influence, and her socks - she had lost her shoes in her flight - slipped off her feet and swayed, attracted by the Earth's force. On the ladder, we tried to grab them.

Excerpt from Italo Calvino, The Distance from the Moon, 1976

John Adams Whipple/James Wallace Black, The Moon, 1857-1860

Photograph of the moon taken by M. Puiseux, Sept. 12, 1903. Moon's age: 19 days.

The sun is shining on a house. He can shine in where he will, for it is but the shell of a house. Any one can look in from outside and see that isis not in fit state to be furnished for the habitation of man. Such a house is the Moon; a house where life can find no place to dwell in. Because the moon is a dead world, a mere world-shell, there is offered no bar to our prying where we will. Where the sun holds the candle to guide us, there we may look. The moon neither assists nor resists.

from: The heavens and their story (1908) by Annie S.D. (Annie Scot Dill) Maunder, b. 1868
via: archive

Film still from "A Trip to the Moon" (1902, dir. Georges Méliès)

Film stills from "The Impossible Voyage" (1904, dir. Georges Méliès)
__________________________

What Counsel Has the Hooded Moon

What counsel has the hooded moon
Put in thy heart, my shyly sweet,
Of Love in ancient plenilune,
Glory and stars beneath his feet -- -
A sage that is but kith and kin
With the comedian Capuchin?

Believe me rather that am wise
In disregard of the divine,
A glory kindles in those eyes
Trembles to starlight. Mine, O Mine!
No more be tears in moon or mist
For thee, sweet sentimentalist.

James Joyce

__________________________

__________________________

Lunar Eclipse, Saturday, March 3rd 2007

“The painting was created in 1888 by Julius Grimm (1842-1906), a German scientific photographer whose techniques of mapping the surface of the moon became famous when his acclaimed Atlas der Astrophysik was published in 1881. After meeting the Grand Duke Friedrich I von Baden, an astronomy enthusiast, in 1887, Grimm decided to paint a representation of the moon, based on his photographs, to be presented to the Grand Duke. The painting shows the moon as it can never be seen in reality: fully lit across the entire surface at once. The painting’s highly textured surface faithfully represents the actual landscape of the moon, which Grimm determined with precision by examining the shadows cast during the various lunar phases. When lighted from the direction Grimm indicated with a painted arrow, the ridges of paint cast shadows that create the photorealistic effect of the painting.” via EON

During its flight, the Galileo spacecraft returned images of the Moon. The Galileo spacecraft took these images on December 7, 1992 on its way to explore the Jupiter system in 1995-97. The distinct bright ray crater at the bottom of the image is the Tycho impact basin. The dark areas are lava rock filled impact basins: Oceanus Procellarum (on the left), Mare Imbrium (center left), Mare Serenitatis and Mare Tranquillitatis (center), and Mare Crisium (near the right edge). This picture contains images through the Violet, 756 nm, 968 nm filters. The color is 'enhanced' in the sense that the CCD camera is sensitive to near infrared wavelengths of light beyond human vision. The Galileo project is managed for NASA's Office of Space Science by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. via apod

Snapshot from the surface of the Moon/Apollo 12 Landing Site (click to enlarge) via LPI

Millennium Annular Solar Eclipse Credit & Copyright: Mikael Svalgaard Explanation: The Moon's shadow raced across planet Earth on January 15. Observers within the central shadow track were able to witness an annular solar eclipse as the Moon's apparent size was too small to completely cover the Sun. A visually dramatic ring of fire, the annular phase lasted up to 11 minutes and 8 seconds depending on location, the longest annular solar eclipse for the next 1,000 years. This picture of the Moon's silhouette just before mid-eclipse was taken within the eclipse path from the city of Kanyakumari at the southern tip of India. via apod

Étienne Léopold Trouvelot, 1881

Anonymous, Moon, partially eclipsed. 1912, 1 April, 9:30 pm and 9:50 pm

A Moon or a Button: A Collection of First Picture Ideas by Ruth Krauss and Remy Charlip, 1959

Casey Kaplan, Staircase to the moon, 2008

__________________________

almost at the equator
almost at the equinox
exactly at midnight
from a ship
the full

moon

in the center of the sky

Gary Snyder - Once Only

Sappa Creek near Singapore
March 1958

__________________________

Leonid Tishkov, Private Moon (see the whole series here)
__________________________

To the Rising Full Moon

Wilt thou suddenly enshroud thee,

Who this moment wert so nigh?
Heavy rising masses cloud thee,

Thou art hidden from mine eye.

Yet my sadness thou well knowest,

Gleaming sweetly as a star!
That I'm loved, 'tis thou that showest,

Though my loved one may be far.

Upward mount then! clearer, milder,

Robed in splendour far more bright!
Though my heart with grief throbs wilder,

Fraught with rapture is the night!

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1828.

______________________________________

Nicholas Hughes, from the series: In Darkness Visible, Verse I, 2007

Nicholas Hughes, from the series: In Darkness Visible, Verse I, 2007

Edward Steichen Pastoral - Moonlight, 1907, Photogravure

Edward Steichen, Moonlit Landscape, 1903

Sarah Wyman Whitman, A Warm Night, ca.1889

__________________________

The Moon and her Mother

The Moon once begged her Mother to make her a gown.
"How can I?" replied she; "there's no fitting your figure.
At one time you're a New Moon, and at another you're a
Full Moon; and between whiles you're neither one nor the other."

From: Aesop' Fables, Illustration: Arthur Rackham

__________________________

Bat Before the Moon by Biho Takashi, circa 1910

Ohara Koson (Shoson), (1877 - 1945),
Monkey Reaching For Reflection Of The Moon, ca. 1910

_________________________

The monkey is reaching

The monkey is reaching
For the moon in the water.
Until death overtakes him
He'll never give up.
If he'd let go the branch and
Disappear in the deep pool,
The whole world would shine
With dazzling pureness.

Hakuin (1686 - 1768)

_________________________

Andrew Wyeth, Moon Madness, 1982

__________________________

Take a moon mysteries and myths quiz.

Things that Quicken the Heart

Heavenly Bodies - Robert Longo

When I draw, I take it into me. I look at it, it goes into every part of my body; it comes out of me.

Animals in Art - Adam Fuss

The aesthetic of me not being there

Favorite Monsters - The Cat with Hands

This is why poetic images are imaginings in a distinctive sense: not mere fancies and illusions but imaginings that are visible inclusions of the alien in the sight of the familiar.

Movie Moments - Solaris, 1972

Mankind does not move forward synchronously, it stops and starts and goes off in different directions. And only when scientific discoveries occur in the course of technological development is there a corresponding leap in man's moral development.

Black & White - Dogs

When the Man waked up he said, 'What is Wild Dog doing here?' And the Woman said, 'His name is not Wild Dog any more, but the First Friend, because he will be our friend for always and always and always.'

Circles - Mandalas - Radial Symmetry IX

With color one obtains an energy that seems to stem from witchcraft

Animals in Art - Chris Marker's Petite Bestiaire

Chris Marker lives in Paris and very rarely grants interviews. When asked for a picture of himself, he usually offers a photograph of a cat instead.

19th Century Stereographs

Form is henceforth divorced from matter. In fact, matter as a visible object is of no great use any longer, ...

Movie Moments - Landscape in the Mist, 1988

Don't worry. I will tell you our story. In the beginning there was chaos ...

Theo Angelopoulos, Landscape in the Mist, 1988

Alchemical manuscripts - Cabala

When you have water, that is Mercury of the Air, that is of the Stone and Air of Fire, that is Spirit of Mercury and fire that is Mercury of the Earth, that is of Luna, then you shall have the Art fully.

Early 20th Century Illustrations from Japanese Children's Books

I imagine that yes is the only living thing

Movie Moments - Jean Painlevé

Roll on, deep and dark blue ocean, roll. Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain. Man marks the earth with ruin, but his control stops with the shore.

Marvels of Creatures and Strange Things Existing

Kitab Aja'ib al-makhluqat wa Gharaib al-Mawjudat

Marvels of Creatures and Strange Things Existing

Sunday Favorites

Childhood is the sleep of reason

Lights in the Night

… the Stars That nature hung in Heav’n, and fill’d their Lamps With everlasting oil, to give due light To the misled and lonely Travailer.

Movie Moments - Lotte Reiniger

Happy Holidays!

Tsuki Hyakushi - 100 Aspects of the Moon

Whore and monk, we sleep under one roof together, moon in a field of clover

Black & White - Famous People with Animals

We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals.

Heinrich von Kleist, On the Puppet Theater

Paradise is locked and bolted and the Cherub is behind us. We must make a journey around the world, to see if a back door has perhaps been left open

On the Marionette Theater

Black & White - Hands III

Please leave your fingerprints

3 short documentaries about vanishing, loss and preservation.

A Factory - A Museum - A Collection

Sunday Favorites

Let us again pretend that life is a solid substance, shaped like a globe, which we turn about in our fingers. Let us pretend that we can make out a plain and logical story, so that when one matter is despatched—love for instance—we go on, in an orderly manner, to the next.

Photographing the Photographer

Who photographs the photographer?

Animation Short - When The Day Breaks

Moon

you'll be beautiful in my manner

When I draw, I take it into me. I look at it,
it goes into every part of my body; it comes out of me.

This is why poetic images are imaginings in a distinctive sense:
not mere fancies and illusions but imaginings that are visible
inclusions of the alien in the sight of the familiar.

Mankind does not move forward synchronously,
it stops and starts and goes off in different directions.
And only when scientific discoveries occur in the
course of technological development is there a
corresponding leap in man's moral development.

When the Man waked up he said,
'What is Wild Dog doing here?'
And the Woman said,
'His name is not Wild Dog any more,
but the First Friend,
because he will be our friend
for always and always and always.'

Chris Marker lives in Paris and very rarely grants interviews.
When asked for a picture of himself, he usually offers
a photograph of a cat instead.

Form is henceforth divorced from matter. In fact,
matter as a visible object is of no great use any longer, ...

Don't worry. I will tell you our story.
In the beginning there was chaos ...

When you have water, that is Mercury of the Air,
that is of the Stone and Air of Fire, that is Spirit
of Mercury and fire that is Mercury of the Earth,
that is of Luna, then you shall have the Art fully.

Roll on, deep and dark blue ocean, roll.
Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain.
Man marks the earth with ruin,
but his control stops with the shore.

… the Stars
That nature hung in Heav’n, and fill’d their Lamps
With everlasting oil, to give due light
To the misled and lonely Travailer.

Whore and monk, we sleep
under one roof together,
moon in a field of clover

Let us again pretend that life is a solid substance, shaped like a globe,
which we turn about in our fingers. Let us pretend that we can make out
a plain and logical story, so that when one matter is despatched—love for
instance—we go on, in an orderly manner, to the next.