Rome is pretty grand…
Today’s lunch: grilled, stuffed anchovies (pecorino cheese and bread stuffing), with steamed spinach on the side. Yum!
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After lunch we had a beer with (OK, next to) actor Tim Roth and one of his sons (not sure if the nice young man was Hunter or Cormac - both b.t.w. are named after Tim and his wife’s favourite authors, Hunter S. Thompson and Cormac McCarthy, respectively)…
Mr. Roth was very cool and kind enough to sign Camelia’s newly bought copy of Italo Calvino’s funny stories Le Cosmicomiche…
Tim Roth when his tattoo was fresh…
(Photo Ken Sharp)
Speaking of cool, June 30, 1953 was the premier day for Chevrolet’s Corvette line…
Photo of the original 1953 Corvette Convertible - red leather seats, whitewall tyres.
Speaking of cool cars:
This strange inscription appears on a church next to the Trevi Fountain:
Julius’s Red Car: Mazarinus
Surely Caesar would ride a Ferrari, not a Maserati - no?
Me chillin’ at the top of The Spanish Steps…
Like the Bobster said:
Oh, the streets of Rome are filled with rubble,
ancient footprints are everywhere.
You could almost think that you’re seeing double,
On a cold, dark night on the Spanish Stairs.
A Task, Czeslaw Milosz (June 30, 1911 - 2004)
In fear and trembling, I think I would fulfill my life
Only if I brought myself to make a public confession
Revealing a sham, my own and of my epoch:
We were permitted to shriek in the tongue of dwarfs and demons
But pure and generous words were forbidden
Under so stiff a penalty that whoever dared to pronounce one
Considered himself as a lost man.
Milosz received the 1980 Nobel Prize in Literature as a writer “who with uncompromising clear-sightedness voices man’s exposed condition in a world of severe conflicts…”
He said in his banquet speech:
“There is a paradox inherent in the poet’s calling. Savagely individualistic, pursuing goals which are visible only to his few intimate friends, he grows accustomed to be branded as difficult and obscure, only to discover one day that his poems constitute a link between people and that he must assume, whether he wants it or not, a symbolic role. Living a long time abroad, I gradually became a poet of the young generations in Poland, and, as I guess, my adventure has some auspicious features of a general import. Poets and their readers may be separated by distance but if a spiritual unity between them is preserved, borders and barriers, thatever their nature, have not power. I think that we, both in Poland and outside, accomplished an important thing by refusing to recognize a division of Polish literature into two separate bodies, depending on where a given writer lives. Credit should here be given to those of my colleagues who have not been swayed by absurd doctrines, and to the young who have promoted free exchange of ideas, whether through lectures, periodicals or books. Volumes of my poetry published by their independent presses are most precious items on my bookshelves. No lesser homage is due to the astonishing energy and perseverance of a few persons who founded abroad institutions dedicated to publishing books and periodicals in Polish, such as the Literary Institute in France, that has been active without interruption since the end of the war and has been engaged in issuing books both of authors in exile and of those from Poland. Such a continuity and unity of a culture, maintained in most unfavorable circumstances, speaks against romantic moods of irrevocability and nostalgia, attached by the nineteenth century to the notion of exile.” (Source)
Today is Dave Van Ronk’s birthday - the “Mayor of MacDougal Street” would have been 73, but unfortunately left us prematurely due to complications following colon cancer in 2002…
Above: Dylan, Suze Rotolo & Dave Van Ronk in the Village…
Below: Dave raps, and then sings Gaslight Rag…
One more late, great folkie:
Mark Spoelstra (June 30, 1940 – 2007) was an American singer-songwriter and folk and blues guitarist.
He was born and raised in Kansas City, Missouri. He began his musical career in Los Angeles in his teens and migrated around to wind up in New York City in time to take part in the folk music revival of the early 1960s. He is best remembered for his activity in the Greenwich Village area. He performed with Bob Dylan soon after Dylan’s arrival in New York City, was a contributor to Broadside Magazine and recorded a number of albums for Folkways Records and other labels.
Below: Mark Spoelstra via Folkways Records: Sugar Babe, It’s All Over Now
John Pike (June 30, 1911 - 1979): Village Green, 1945 - oil on fiberboard (Smithsonian)
“Village Green shows a congested square where cars, bicycles, and horse-drawn carriages compete for space on the narrow roads. The image suggests the effects of war on the home front: a soldier in the foreground greets an elderly neighbor, a group of children play “war” in the square, a sign advertises a Red Cross blood drive, and an honor roll lists the names of local boys serving overseas. John Pike painted this image in 1945, when World War II was ending and he was posted to Asia as an artist-correspondent. The thin layers of paint, scumbled colors, and bird’s-eye view create a hazy, sentimental image that evokes a distant memory, as if recalled by someone far from home.” - Smithsonian label
Sean Scully (b. June 30, 1945): (symbol for pi), 1994 - etching, aquatint, sugarlift, and spitbite on paper (Printer: Jennifer Melby), Smithsonian
“Scully was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1945 but was raised in London, where his family moved in 1949. He attended classes at London’s Central School of Art (1962–1965) and at Croydon College of Art (1965–1968) and received a bachelor’s degree from Newcastle University in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 1972. That year, he traveled to the United States for the first time for a one-year residency at the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass. He moved to the United States in 1975, settling in New York City. He taught at Princeton University from 1977 to 1982 and was a professor at Parsons School of Design in New York City from 1981 to 1984. In 1983, the year he became a U.S. citizen, Scully received a Guggenheim Fellowship and an artist fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Scully was nominated in 1989 and in 1993 for the Turner Prize that is presented annually by the Tate Gallery in Britain. His paintings, prints, pastels and photographs have been exhibited internationally, and his work is in the permanent collections of some of the leading museum in the U.S. and Europe. Scully maintains studios in New York City, Barcelona, Spain; and Munich, Germany.” - Smithsonian American Art Museum. “Smithsonian American Art Museum Presents Selections from Its Master Set of Prints by Sean Scully, the Only Set in a U.S. Museum” (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian American Art Museum, press release, May 1, 2007).
John Scott (June 30, 1940 - 2007): Thornbush Blues Totem, 1990 - painted steel (Smithsonian)
“John Scott was born into a deeply religious Catholic family in New Orleans, Louisiana, in 1940. He received his MFA in sculpture and printmaking from Michigan State University, East Lansing, in 1965. He has been a professor of fine art at Xavier University in New Orleans since that time. Scott has won various national-level awards for his work and has completed several public and privately commissioned installations throughout the United States.
Scott traditionally works in mixed media, but he is currently making painted kinetic metal sculptures that draw upon African-American traditions and themes. Many of these works respond to peripheral movement and therefore encourage an active relationship between art, its surroundings, and its audience. Scott first began to incorporate kinetic qualities in his work during the summer of 1983 when he studied with sculptor George Rickey at the Hand Hollow Foundation in New York. During this period he initiated a new emphasis on linear elements and bright color characteristic of his current style. Although Scott is concerned with formal issues, he firmly believes in the power of art to respond to social and political realities. His recent work, however, is less political than it is evocative of the cultural traditions brought to New Orleans by African slaves. Indeed, just as the rhythms and relationships of different types of New Orleans jazz are echoed in the moving, changing lines of metal, so do the brilliantly painted markings recall African voodoo and tribal rituals that derive from America’s multicultured past.” - Jacquelyn Serwer. curatorial files (Washington, D.C.: National Museum of American Art, 1995).
George Jo Mess (June 30, 1898 - 1962): Breezes, n.d. - aquatint (Smithsonian)
Earl Cunningham (June 30, 1893 - 1977): Blue Sail Fleet Returns, after 1949 - oil on fiberboard (Smithsonian)
“Earl Cunningham painted more than four hundred images of the sea, based on his memories of voyages up and down the East Coast. Blue Sail Fleet Returns does not show an actual location, but rather a combination of real and imaginary elements. He created a fantasy world with purple water, orange trees, and birds as large as a house, and may have included himself as one of the tiny fishermen on the pier. The sea represented freedom to Cunningham, and one of his dreams was to own a houseboat so he could live permanently on the water” - (“Earl Cunningham’s American Eden,” Gary Schwan, The Palm Beach Post, 1994, Chuck and Jan Rosenak research material, 1990-1999, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution).
