Ordinary finds

Oops, forgot the goodnight story: Therefore, the best advice...

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 20:17:57 +0100

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...

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 19:39:26 +0100

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 -...

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 19:25:00 +0100

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,...

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 18:47:36 +0100

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,...

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 18:24:33 +0100

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...

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 18:22:20 +0100

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

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 18:17:01 +0100

Another explicit work by Charles Demuth:

Three Sailors, 1917

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

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 18:16:05 +0100

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...

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 18:00:00 +0100

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...

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 17:59:00 +0100

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...

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 17:52:48 +0100

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,...

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 17:49:57 +0100

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...

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 17:25:38 +0100

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...

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 16:52:30 +0100

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,...

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 16:30:00 +0100

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

Image: David Gascoyne’s notebook - British...

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 14:41:00 +0100

Image: David Gascoyne’s notebook - British Library

“David Gascoyne spent the years just before World War II in Paris, where he became friendly with Salvador Dalí, Max Ernst, André Breton, Paul Éluard and Pierre Jean Jouve. His poetry of this period was published in Poems 1937-1942 (1943) with illustrations by the artist Graham Sutherland.

His poem Requiem, dedicated to the future victims of war, was written to be set to music by his friend Priaulx Rainier. Her Requiem was premiered in 1956. She died on Gascoyne’s 70th birthday, 10 October 1986.

He returned to France after the war and lived there on and off until the mid 1960s. His work from the 1950s appeared in A Vagrant and Other Poems (1950), and Night Thoughts (1956). Interestingly, this later work had moved away from surrealism towards a more metaphysical and religious poetry. After suffering a mental breakdown, Gascoyne returned to England and spent the rest of his life on the Isle of Wight. He appears to have written little from that point on. Publication continued due to various ‘rediscoveries’ of his works, with a number of collections and selections of his work from Oxford University Press, Enitharmon and other imprints. Two books of his journals were returned to him after having been lost for some time and were published in two separate hardbacks by Alan Clodd at Enitharmon Press. When a third book was found, a new collection including the additional material was edited by Lucien Jenkins for Skoob Books Publishing. For the latter edition David Gascoyne himself provided what he called a ‘postface’, one of the most extended pieces of writing from his later years.

It was in Whitecroft Hospital on the Isle of Wight that Gascoyne met his wife, Judy Lewis, in a remarkable coincidence. Judy explains:

One of my favourite poems was called September Sun. I read it one afternoon and one of the patients came up to me afterwards and said ‘I wrote that’, I put my hand on his shoulder and said ‘Of course you did, dear’. Then of course when I got to know him I realised he had.

They married in 1975. David Gascoyne died on 25 November 2001 at the age of 85.” (Wiki)

September Sun: 1947

Magnificent strong sun! In these last days
So prodigally generous of pristine light
That’s wasted only man’s sight who will not see
And by self-darkened spirits from whose night
Can rise no longer orison or praise
Let us consume in fire unfed like yours
And may the quickened gold within me come
To mintage in due season, and not be
Transmitted to no better end than dumb
And self-sufficient usury. These days and years
May bring the sudden call to harvesting,
When in the fields man’s labours only yield
Glitter and husks, then with an angrier sun may He
Who first with His gold seed the sightless field
of Chaos planted, all our trash to cinders bring.

(Source)

Salvador Dali - a poem by David GascoyneThe face of the...

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 14:34:00 +0100

Salvador Dali - a poem by David Gascoyne

The face of the precipice is black with lovers;
The sun above them is a bag of nails; the spring’s
First rivers hide among their hair.
Goliath plunges his hand into the poisoned well
And bows his head and feels my feet walk through his brain.
The children chasing butterflies turn around and see him there
With his hand in the well and my body growing from his head,
And are afraid. They drop their nets and walk into the wall like smoke.

The smooth plain with its mirrors listens to the cliff
Like a basilisk eating flowers.
And the children, lost in the shadows of the catacombs,
Call to the mirrors for help:
‘Strong-bow of salt, cutlass of memory,
Write on my map the name of every river.’

A flock of banners fight their way through the telescoped forest
And fly away like birds towards the sound of roasting meat.
Sand falls into the boiling rivers through the telescopes’ mouths
And forms clear drops of acid with petals of whirling flame.
Heraldic animals wade through the asphyxia of planets,
Butterflies burst from their skins and grow long tongues like plants,
The plants play games with a suit of mail like a cloud.

Mirrors write Goliath’s name upon my forehead,
While the children are killed in the smoke of the catacombs
And lovers float down from the cliffs like rain.

From Interview w. Gascoyne:

‘I met Roland Penrose through Paul Eluard, his long-time friend. Roland had a house in Hampstead and a committee of surrealists met there to plan the International Surrealist Exhibition that was held at the New Burlington Gallery in London. This was in 1936. I remember Dali gave a lecture in a new diving suit, a proper diving suit complete with metal helmet. He had one of those lantern shows that didn’t work very well and it got very hot inside the suit and I remember having to go out and try and find a spanner to get him out of the suit’
—David Gascoyne

A fuller group photo of the organizers of and some of the...

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 14:28:00 +0100

A fuller group photo of the organizers of and some of the participants in the International Surrealist Exhibition, New Burlington Galleries, London, 1936:

Standing left to right: Rupert Lee, Ruthven Todd, Salvador Dalí, Paul Eluard, Roland Penrose, Herbert Read, E.L.T. Mesens, George Reavey and Hugh Sykes Williams. Seated left to right: Diana Brinton Lee, Nusch Eluard, Eileen Agar, Sheila Legge and an unidentified friend of Dalí

Tableau at the First International Surrealist Exhibition in...

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 14:23:00 +0100

Tableau at the First International Surrealist Exhibition in London 1936.

In image: Diana Brinton-Lee, Salvador Dalí (in diving suit), Rupert Lee, Paul Éluard, Nusch Éluard, ELT Mesens

Dalí had attempted to deliver his lecture Fantomes paranoiaques authentiques, wearign the diving suit but after a few minutes was near asphyxiation and had to be rescued by poet David Gascoyne: “The eminent surrealist caused a furore when he stepped on stage and began to deliver his lecture in a full deep-sea diving suit. Only minutes later, a shocked audience watched with a mixture of horror and disbelief, as he began to suffocate and had to be prised out of the helmet with pliers.” (Source)

”I just wanted to show that I was plunging deeply into the human mind,” Dalí said…

Image by unknown photographer, via The Home of the Surrealists: Lee Miller, Roland Penrose and their Circle at Farley Farm in Google Books

Images of Lee Miller as a young girl… (via The Home of the...

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 14:15:59 +0100

Images of Lee Miller as a young girl…

(via The Home of the Surrealists: Lee Miller, Roland Penrose and their Circle at Farley Farm in Google Books)