Ordinary finds

Oops, forgot the goodnight story:

Therefore, the best advice remains to accept everything, to act like a heavy mass even if you feel you are being blown away, to let no unnecessary step to be enticed from you, to regard others with the gaze of an animal, to feel no remorse, in short, to force down any remnants of this ghostly life, that is, to multiply the final quiet of the grave and to let nothing but this remain.

A characteristic motion in such a state is running your little finger over your eyebrows.

From Decisions by Franz Kafka (found in the little 1913 volume entitled Betrachtung - translated by Kevin Blahut as Contemplation, 1996 - Twisted Spoon Press, Prague)

Ill.: Etching of Kafka by José Luis Cuevas

It’s an early nighty-night from OF today - sleep tight with this Nocturne:

Karl Struss (1886–1981): Brooklyn Bridge, Nocturne, ca. 1912–13 - Palladium print
© 1983 Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas

Earlie Hudnall, Jr. (b. Nov. 8, 1946): Lady with Pup, 1990 - Belize

“Earlie Hudnall, Jr. was born in 1946 and grew up in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. He developed an appreciation for personal history through his grandmother, who passed on to him stories of family and community as they sat together on the porch in the summer. Years later, while majoring in art at Texas Southern, he received further encouragement to draw on his own experience from the artist John Biggers, who had founded the university’s art department and urged his students to explore their African-American heritage. As the school yearbook editor, he went out into the community to document the lives of the people in the wards of Houston. The intimacy that he found among neighborhood residents in the predominantly African-American Third Ward area reminded Hudnall of the sense of community he had known as a boy in Hattiesburg. As an artist, Hudnall is widely praised for his ability to capture the emotion in a seemingly mundane moment. Hudnall views his subjects as universal icons, capable of conveying stories about family and community regardless of their race. Hudnall is the university photographer for Texas Southern University in Houston. The Wittliff Gallery is proud to own ten of his images to date.” - SOURCE: Amon Carter Museum website, and Reflections in Black: A History of Black Photographers 1840 to the Present by Deborah Willis.

Also:

Flipping Boy, 1983 - gelatin silver print on paper (Smithsonian)

“Hudnall directs us to the boy’s acrobatics in the street as an expression of the beauty found in everyday or humble circumstances. Upside down, the boy takes in Houston’s urban jumble, a phenomenon that is no less confusing to the viewer right side up. Old and new, poor and rich are sharply juxtaposed in a city that makes uneasy neighbors of historically black neighborhoods, such as the Fourth Ward pictured here, and gleaming commercial skyscrapers.” - Smithsonian label

Looking Out, 1991 - gelatin silver print (Smithsonian)

“Hudnall finds inspiration in the beauty and pride in everyday life in African American communities in the South. This youngster’s stare is so direct that he seems to look at and through us, a glance that suggests he is wiser than his age. Completely at ease in his surroundings, his posture, dress, and expression appear spontaneous, but actually the image is carefully composed.” - Smithsonian label 

William Stroud (Nov. 8, 1812 - 1889): Sower’s Book, Stationery and Variety Store, Norristown, Pennsylvania (1/2 pl.), 1853 - Daguerreotype, fully silvered

Last year’s Stroud daguerrotype on OF

Early Charles Demuth, Cubist/Precisionist:

Bermuda Landscape, 1917 - Watercolor and pencil on paper mounted on cardboard (Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden - 8 works)

Charles Demuth also did more allegorical work, for instance:

Incense of a New Church, 1921

See also Demuth’s ‘greatest hit’ - last year on OF - I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold

Another explicit work by Charles Demuth:

Three Sailors, 1917

Charles Demuth (Nov. 8, 1883 - 1935): Turkish Bath with Self Portrait (1918)

One of many gay themed works by Demuth, perhaps inspired by his own ‘cruising’ of the Lafayette Baths in NYC (which b.t.w. were administered by Ira and George Gershwin around 1916)…

Still from La Piscine, 1969: (L to R) Alain Delon, Romy Schneider, Maurice Ronet, Jane Birkin

Masculinity Studies 101: Write a five page essay explaining how Alain Delon exudes cool masculinity in a non-gay fashion, despite wearing a white blazer with a carnation in his lapel. (Alternate task: Argue why Alain Delon is the perfect gay icon…)

Alain D. is 74 today, and still handsome…

More AD on OF

Can’t resist slipping in another Robert Capa shot of Papa:

Ernest Hemingway, editing For Whom the Bell Tolls - Sun Valley, Idaho, 1940

Birthday of Martha Gellhorn (Nov. 8, 1908 - 1998), novelist, travel writer, war correspondent and all-round tough cookie - and the third wife of Ernest Hemingway…

Photo of Martha and Ernest dancing at their wedding party in 1940 - Sun Valley, Idaho - by Robert Capa…

Good post with Gellhorn quotes from last year on OF - here’s a favourite: “It would be a bitter cosmic joke if we destroy ourselves due to atrophy of the imagination.”

A quick tour of the birthdays before we return to art:

Irish-born writer Bram Stoker, who lived in London for a great part of his life, managing the Lyceum Theatre, was born on Nov. 8, 1847 (d. 1912)…

Now famous as the author of Dracula, Stoker was better known in his life-time as the personal assistant and biographer of actor Henry Irving. In 1897 Stoker’s now immortal horror novel appeared: The original 529-page manuscript of Dracula, believed to have been lost, was found in a barn in northwestern Pennsylvania during the early 1980s. It included the typed manuscript with many corrections, and “handwritten on the title page was “THE UN-DEAD.” The author’s name was shown at the bottom as Bram Stoker. Author Robert Latham notes, “the most famous horror novel ever published, its title changed at the last minute.” (Wiki)

Photo of Stoker, via Illustrated London News (Source: The History of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea Virtual Museum) 

Museum caption: “Bram Stoker, author of Dracula, lived at several places in Chelsea including 18 St Leonard Terrace where his blue plaque has been placed. But the most interesting story relates to the time when he lived at 27 Cheyne Walk. Walking along the Embankment he witnessed a man falling into the river. He rushed to the rescue and took the drowning man to his house, laying him out on the kitchen table where he expired. His wife Florence, previously engaged to Oscar Wilde, was not amused and the event led to marital discord.”

Florence Stoker, née Balcombe

Standing Figure, by Graham Sutherland, 1952 - Private Collection

David Gascoyne’s Poems 1937- 1942 (Poetry London Editions 1943) was illustrated by Graham Sutherland…

David Gascoyne’s A Short Survey of Surrealism, 1935…

Journal entry on 23rd April 1939: ‘The essential nature of the experience being Negation. The void, das Nichts, Nada, le Néant. Practically the only image that presents itself at all strongly to me is a black vacuum in (or through) which two eyes are fixedly staring’ and searching for the right tone to write poems about man’s present spiritual crisis.” - David Gascoyne, Collected Journals