Francis Bacon

The main squeeze and I went to see the Francis Bacon retrospective at the Met last week. It really made an impression on me. I loved the color palette: red, pinks, emerald green, lilac, golden yellow and a deep strong orange countered with blacks, greys and browns. So beautiful. I was also really into the strange deformed blobs held together pictorally by these thin architectural lines, coverging everything toward the center. I find myself using this same device sometimes when drawing - a way to help balance out the composition. More than anything else though I liked that the work felt extremely energized and alive, it was like he would wait for weeks until he had gathered all his emotional strength and then BAM! Heart on canvas.

...here is another 6 part BBC documentary from what looks to be the 80ies ...
...and here is Jerry Saltz's not-so-flattering article about the show in New York Magazine...

Brain Less

I have been sitting here for over an hour trying to figure out what to post. I want to do it but I just can't think of what. It is my allergies, they are killing me this year. I can't even think straight!! Anyway - so I am sorry this is all I got to give, just a handful of 35mm shots. I don't even have energy enough to link to things.

But soon! Soon I shall have some new things to think/talk/show.

xob.

Samara Golden

I really love this work by Samara Golden found via i heart photograph. It reminds me of the internet somehow, kind of worlds within worlds, with multiple mirrored reflections and cardboard cut-outs of objects as stand-ins for the real thing. I can't quite explain it. Also the kind of references to banal living rooms, with house plants, water tumblers, funky afghans, weird wallpaper and faux brick...like things you would see in the background of photos of strangers when image searching on the world wide webs...

Interiors 1978 Woody Allen

Unlike most posts on this blog, and unlike most movies directed by Woody Allen - this is an unusually heavy and moody piece. Interiors is a perfect capsule of its moment in time, illustrated in exquisite detail by the production design of Mel Bourne. I saw this movie years ago, too long ago to really appreciate it, and had forgotten most of it. Watching it again this weekend I was so taken by its strength - the combination of wonderful performances by great actresses, the narrative of a twisted, yet universally familiar family dynamic, and the backdrop of the impeccably cool, silvery interiors in which all the emotionally wrought tensions take place.

"I feel a real need to express something, but I don’t know what it is I want to express…or how to express it…"

Every night is movie night around here lately.

xox

b.

Ooot and Aboot

(...outtakes over here...)

My poor digital camera hasn't been getting much action these days, but I am trying to bring it back into the fold. I even secretly wish I had an iphone because I am starting to see images popping up from it everywhere and they have something really nice about them. Their own funny 21 Century aesthetic I suppose - kind of foggy and flat but beautiful in its own way...

Here is a flickr site with some good ones...

xob.

Master Potters

Having been very inspired by the video of Isaac Button posted on You Have Been Here Sometime - I stumbled upon these equally intriguing videos of Shōji Hamada throwing pots in a 1968 demonstration and a short clip featuring Bernard Leach fom the film Art of the Potter.

Leach was born in Hong Kong, but spent his young adult years in Japan where he came into contact with a group of young Japanese art lovers who called themselves Shirakaba (白樺). Through them he learned about William Morris and the Arts and Crafts Movement. It was in Japan that Leach began potting under the direction of Shigekichi Urano (Kenzan VI) and befriended a young potter named Shōji Hamada. With Hamada, he set up the Leach Pottery at St. Ives, Cornwall in 1920, including the construction of a traditional Japanese wood burning kiln. The two of them promoted pottery as a combination of Western and Eastern arts and philosophies.

(source: Bernard Leach wiki)

I think I may finally hand over a wad of cash and take a ceramics course myself. I keep putting it off because of the money but maybe it would be worth it just to give it a go...anyway - deep thoughts of clay over here...

Trying to Re-Energize

(..."Geology is an intensely visual science." - quote and image from here...)

Kind of low on the blogging juice this last week - maybe it's the season change? I'm not sure but my brain really has been elsewhere. I have pegged it down for just long enough to give you a few links to some blogs I have recently come across or been reminded of and have really enjoyed reading - archives and all. Maybe this is where all my blogging energy has been spent?


Manishtama
50 backflips
You Have Been Here Sometime
BROWNTOWN
Unchanging Window
i heart photograph
2THE WALLS
Wonder Wonder
secretlake
Ouno Design
Nokomis


Old friends, new friends, and ghosty figures haunting my internets...

xxx