Kneeling Nun, verso, by Martin van Meytens, c1731
a notable detail of the painting revealed below
Thursday, February 27, 2014
Tuesday, February 18, 2014
Chuck Close at work
Chuck Close at work. From Graphis Magazine #313 (no date printed but I think it is from around 1998) It is an interesting insight to how he works. It looks like a two inch square grid at a 45º angle, he starts at the top blocking color in several rows, and then each grid tile is given a "dot."
At first it might appear to be that he fills in a band of the grid from the top down but compared to the finished piece and there were changes made in the corners. Aside from the background there is a little use of line that extends outside of an individual grid box. For example, part of his glasses and part of the shirt collar.
At first it might appear to be that he fills in a band of the grid from the top down but compared to the finished piece and there were changes made in the corners. Aside from the background there is a little use of line that extends outside of an individual grid box. For example, part of his glasses and part of the shirt collar.
The lift he uses to raise himself to paint higher portions of the painting appears to be a Big Joe Lift In-Between Handling Manual Stacker IBH1018 or a very similar model.
Another photo in the article shows Close working in a different workspace where the painting can be lowered down into a hole in the floor. When he moved studios he retired his Big Joe lift and started moving the painting.
Below is the finished painting.
Saturday, February 15, 2014
Alphonse Mucha's wife and the painting Woman in the Wilderness
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| detail of Alphonse Mucha's painting Woman in the Wilderness, 1923 juxtaposed with the photograph of his wife Maruška posing for the painting. (click to embiggen) |
seen here
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| Woman in the Wilderness, 1923, oil on canvas, 201.5 x 299.5 cm (79.3" x 117.9") (click to embiggen) |
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| an attempt to show the scale of the painting |
Monday, February 3, 2014
civility : pissing on a grave
Eduardo Labarca appears to urinate on the grave of Jose Luis Borges on the cover of his book The Enigma of the Modules
"Peeing on that tomb was a legitimate artistic act," … "I am not just a person who goes around peeing on tombs, but a writer with a serious oeuvre," he said today.
By legitimate he means fake :
The photo has provoked outrage in Borges's native Argentina, even though Labarca admits the stream of water descending on the great man's grave actually came from a bottle of water hidden in his right hand.
The reason for it all :
"Anyone who is offended by this is very short-sighted," he said. "Borges was a giant as a writer but I feel complete contempt for him as a citizen. As an old man, almost blind, he came to meet the dictator Pinochet in the days when he was busy killing."
p.s. if you find the design of Borges' gravestone as interesting as I do there then someone has already done the research on it.
Tuesday, January 28, 2014
How Orwellian : Antiwar songs and prowar songs
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| Josef Stalin practices his Nazi salute (eventually, Seeger realized Stalin wasn't the bees knees, but that wasn't until 2007.) |
from Pete Seeger's New York Times Obituary :
When he returned to New York later in 1940, Mr. Seeger made his first albums. He, Millard Lampell and Mr. Hays founded the Almanac Singers, who performed union songs and, until Germany invaded the Soviet Union, antiwar songs, following the Communist Party line. Mr. Guthrie soon joined the group.
During World War II the Almanac Singers’s repertory turned to patriotic, antifascist songs, bringing them a broad audience, including a prime-time national radio spot.
"Antiwar songs" and "antifascist songs"? Why didn't the writer use the available symmetry in terminology : Seeger played antiwar songs and prowar songs.
Those weren't really anti-war songs. They were less against war in general and more against any opposition to the revanchist wars of the USSR and their Nazi partners in crime. Opposing any effort to prevent Poland from being invaded and carved up is somehow "antiwar" while the NY Times describes his songs after the invasion of the USSR as "patriotic, antifascist songs" instead of prowar songs.
Seeger was essentially saying "Leave poor Stalin & Hitler alone! Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland, and Finland are faraway, foreign, irrelevant places" until his pet USSR was attacked that is.
To paraphrase Grouch Marx : These are my principles, if you don't like them … well, the party might tell me if I have others.
Tuesday, January 21, 2014
about the Stalin Society
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| before (Grigorii Petrovsky, bearded, standing next to Josef Stalin) |
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| after (Grigorii Petrovsky no longer standing next to Josef Stalin) |
The Stalin Society, an actual existing thing, is a group who see Joseph Stalin as a great Marxist-Leninist and wish to preserve what they believe is his positive legacy. What happens at the meetings of the Stalin Society?
I assume they take turns dressing up in their Stalin costumes with greasepaint mustaches and chasing each other around the room with plastic hammers playing Duck, Duck, Kulak. At dinner, anyone not in their Stalin costume or if their costume is deemed "inauthentic" (how it is determined one way or the other is opaque and not open to review) then those members aren't allowed to eat. On Trotsky Tuesdays, those who are allowed to eat must do so with an icepick. Members occasionally mysteriously disappear leading to all photos, documents and records of the society needing to be modified to reflect the new reality. There is often talk about the Stalin Society invading Finland out of *cough-cough* "self-defense" and then claiming that they were forced to do it due to a lack of support from the United States. On sunny days, they go out to the park to have a friendly game of volleyball and generally frolic and giggle in the grass with the Hitler Society.
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