Wednesday, January 30
Tuesday, January 29
Thursday, January 24
Tuesday, January 22
the decisive moment
"the decisive moment, it is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event as well as the precise organization of forms which gives that event its proper expression."
-Cartier-Bresson
Sunday, January 20
Five Paintings Of Creepy Children At The Metropolitan Museum Of Art, New York
Robert Peckham (1785-1877)The Raymond Children, ca. 1838
oil on canvas
"A coach and sign painter and Congregationalist deacon, Peckham executed portraits with keen attention to detail. The interior settings of his pictures are careful delineations of his subjects' homes. Anne Elizabeth Raymond (b. 1832) and Joseph Estabrook Raymond (b.1834) are exquisitely dressed and surrounded by their toys and possessions in the parlor of their family's home in Royalston, Massachusetts."
CREEP FACTOR: 6/10
Oliver Tarbell Eddy (1799-1868)The Alling Children, ca. 1839
oil on canvas
"Depicted here are the four oldest children of Stephen Ball Alling (1808-1861), a partner in the New Jersey jewelry firm of Alling, Hall, and Dodd, and Jane H. Weir (1811-1889). From left to right, they are, Stephen Ball (1835-1839), Mary Wilder (b. 1836), Cornelia Meigs (b. 1833), and Emma (b. 1831). The apparent ages of the children date the work to around 1839. The composition indicates that the portrait may have been painted shortly after Stephen's death that same year. His coloristic and spatial separation from his sisters, as well as the pool of light in which he stands support this conclusion. Post mortem portraits were common in the nineteenth century as families often desired likenesses of departed children. The artist painted a posthumous portrait of one of the cousins of the Alling children as well. Eddy's crisp, meticulous detail and vivid color temper somewhat his awkward anatomical drawing, all within a setting that is a document of early Victorian interiors. For group portraits like this one, the lack of interaction or integrated poses make it obvious that Eddy made separate studies of each sitter."
CREEP FACTOR: 8.5/10
Joshua Johnson (active ca. 1796-1824)Edward and Sarah Rutter, ca. 1805
oil on canvas
"The first African-American painter with a recognized body of work, Johnson has long been thought to have been a slave who belonged to the Peale family of artists in Baltimore. In fact, Johnson was not a Peale protégé, but an independent artist, the free son of a white man and a black slave. In 1798 he advertised himself in a Baltimore newspaper as "a self-taught genius" who had "experienced many insuperable obstacles in the pursuit of his studies." Johnson learned a great deal about academic portraiture and developed his distinctive style. The air of stillness, of suspended action, in this portrait gives it an unreal, almost magical, quality."
CREEP FACTOR: 9/10
Joseph Badger (1708-1765)James Badger, 1760
oil on canvas
"One of the least known colonial portraitists, Joseph Badger was the son of a tailor from Charlestown, near Boston. Although never as popular as his contemporaries, he studied their work and often used their portraits as models for his own pictures. Here, the pose is generally derived from Robert Feke's portrait of John Gerry (Museum of Fine Arts, Houston). James Badger, the artist's grandson, was three years old in 1760."
CREEP FACTOR: 5/10
John Singleton Copley (1738-1815)Daniel Crommelin Verplanck, 1771
Oil on canvas
"Daniel Verplanck, scion of a distinguished New York City family, is shown here at the age of nine. In this picture Copley successfully uses, as he had previously, the theme of the young aristocratic figure amusing himself with a pet squirrel on a golden leash. While the squirrel clutches at his leg, the poised sitter keeps the viewer cooly in view. The picture is done in Copley's very best colonial style, remarkable for its keen perception and clarity."
CREEP FACTOR: 8/10
Sunday, January 13
dinosaur
i was mistaken by an old lady for a dinosaur
coming home from the library one day
she had her guide handy, and try as I might
I could not refute the evidence presented against me
so I told her, gently mind you, that I had to go graze on some succulent water plants
and she seemed pleased with herself
and smiled and went on her way
Saturday, January 12
Le Manifeste du Surréalisme, 1924
ANDRÉ BRETON
We are still living under the reign of logic, but the logical processes of our time apply only to the solution of problems of secondary interest. The absolute rationalism which remains in fashion allows for the consideration of only those facts narrowly relevant to our experience. Logical conclusions, on the other hand, escape us. Needless to say, boundaries have been assigned even to ex- perience. It revolves in a cage from which release is becoming increasingly difficult. It too depends upon immediate utility and is guarded by common sense.ant to note that there is no method fixed a priori for the execution of this enterprise, that until the new order it can be considered the province of poets as well as scholars, and that its success does not depend upon the more or less capricious routes which will be followed.
It was only fitting that Freud should appear with his critique on the dream. In fact, it is incredible that this important part of psychic activity has still attracted so little attention. (For, at least from man's birth to his death, thought presents no solution of continuity; the sum of dreaming moments - even taking into consideration pure dream alone, that of sleep - is from the point of view of time no less than the sum of moments of reality, which we shall confine to waking moments.) I have always been astounded by the extreme disproportion in the importance and seriousness assigned to events of the waking moments and to those of sleep by the ordinary observer. Man, when he ceases to sleep, is above all at the mercy of his memory, and the memory normally delights in feebly retracing the circumstance of the dream for him, depriving it of all actual consequence and obliterating the only determinant from the point at which he thinks he abandoned this constant hope, this anxiety, a few hours earlier. He has the illusion of continuing something worthwhile. The dream finds itself relegated to a parenthesis, like the night. And in general it gives no more counsel than the night. This singular state of affairs seems to invite a few reflections:
(con't in comments)
