10,000 feet up, I nestled, placid in the lap of beauty. Anticipating American Airlines’ ‘entertainment’ on a recent trip to Vegas (waterboarding has nothing on Aliens in the Attic, on loop), I pre-downloaded an emergency iPlayer kit, and duly found soothing visual balm in Matthew Collings’s BBC2 documentary What Is Beauty? amidst the epic transatlantic ugliness of blueberry-vomit upholstery, neon ‘home style’ packaging and frozen beef-jerky hostesses with Skeletor smiles.

For me, the real surprise in this shamelessly personal meander through enduring hallmarks of artistic beauty was Magritte’s The Reckless Sleeper. I’ve always thought of Magritte in the terms of AA Gill on Duchamp – a half-hearted hobbyist with a penchant for puns and bad jokes – but Collings’s GCSE-level review of the painting induced a radical re-seeing. Those precise objects, snug yet disembodied in their stony reliquary, simultaneously radiate menace stemming from their meaning, and calm stemming from their mass. Their complex symbolism co-exists painlessly with their self-sufficient beauty: they are laden, but also simply lovely. That balance generates a oasis of settled profundity where my over-analytical brain took pleasure and rest.

Not so Thea Sharrock’s production of Mrs Klein, in its final week at the Almeida. Here the eponymous Freudian analyst, a chilling yet seductively self-assured matriarch, ruthlessly mines every ordinary moment for its meanings and motives, from the death of her son to the competitive struggles with her professionally brilliant but personally stifled daughter. She creates an intensely stormy stage for a family drama where all the players are excruciatingly self-aware, but finds herself increasingly caught in her own web.

Zoe Waites (Melitta) and Clare Higgins (Mrs Klein) in Mrs Klein at the Almeida Theatre. Photo: John Haynes

It’s a barnstorming bit of showmanship from all involved but Clare Higgins’s leading performance in particular nails every one of Collings’s top ten laws of beauty: nature, simplicity, unity, transformation, surroundings, animation, surprise, pattern, selection and spontenaity. She plays Mrs Klein with absolute specificity, selecting and patterning her tics and rhythms to express an extraordinarily dense idiosyncracy of habit and character. Her twists of emotion and illogic ensure that technique never overwhelms humanity, but even as Mrs Klein surprises and delights us, we realise that every thought and action is wearily congruent with her tightly controlled schema. She’s a woman so trapped in self-knowledge she doesn’t know whether she’s awake.  You’ll leave with emotional jetlag, but it’s more than worth the ride.

As for Magritte, I’m armed with my woefully under-used Tate Members card and off to re-explore.

În vara anului trecut, când mă aflam la Bruxelles, m-a frapat că pânza de protecţie care îmbrăca schela unei clădiri, reproducând imaginea faţadelor acesteia, arăta cum pereţii, parcă alcătuiţi dintr-un fel de tencuială “vaporoasă”, erau “traşi” spre margini ca o draperie, în cel mai suprarealist mod cu putinţă, lăsând să se vadă spiritul picturii pe care urma să o găzduiască, cea a lui Magritte. Anul acesta în iunie s-a deschis la Bruxelles un muzeu al unei felii savuroase din tortul belgian al suprarealismului, Muzeul Magritte… În următoarele câteva zile acest blog va tăcea, cât timp voi face o nouă călătorie la Bruxelles. O să încerc să ating din nou cu privirea melonul suprarealist şi nu numai…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFGyi4O8Hxw&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEU4xcre2a4&feature=related

je suis tombé sur un article de Vice au sujet de cette ville, et son tour opérator,
je sais pas si c’est si fun, mais c’est bel et bien weird.

http://www.charleroiadventure.com/

photo par julien le grand

This is based on an earlier post but with additional favorites:

I am a huge art fanatic, dedicating as much time to it as writing and music. These aren’t new artists. They are the masters from the past who I’ve admired for years and years. My all-time favorites.

…

Name: Henri Matisse

Country: France

Style: Fauvism, Modernism

…

Name: Salvador Dali

Country: Spain

Style: Dadaism, Surrealism

…

Name: Hieronymus Bosch

Country: Netherlands

Style: Renaissance

…

Name: Rene Magritte

Country: Belgium

Style: Surrealism

…

Name: Giorgio De Chirico

Country: Greek, Italy

Style: Surrealism

…

Name: Diego Rivera

Country: Mexico

Style: Mexican Muralist, Social Realism

…

Name: Paul Klee

Country: Germany, Swiss

Style: Expressionism, Surrealism

…

Name: Edvard Munch

Country: Norway

Style: Expressionism

…

Name: Pablo Picasso

Country: Spain

Style: Cubism

…

Name: Rufino Tamayo

Country: Mexico

Style: Muralist, Mixografia

…

Name: Wasily Kandinsky

Country: Russia

Style: Expressionism, Bauhaus

…

Name: Franz Marc

Country: Germany

Style: Expressionism

…

Name: Eugene Delacroix

Country: France

Style: Romanticism

…

Name: David Alfaro Siqueiros

Country: Mexico

Style: Mexican Muralist, Social Realism

…

Name: Marcel Duchamp

Country: France, U.S.

Style: Dadaism, Surrealism

…

Name: Francisco Goya

Country: Mexico

Style: Romanticism

…

Name: Juan Gris

Country: Spanish

Style: Cubism

…

Name: Willem de Kooning

Country: Netherlands

Style: Abstract Expressionism

…

Name: George Grosz

Country: Germany

Style: Dadaism, New Objectivity

…

Name: Joan Miro

Country: Spain

Style: Dadaism, Surrealism

…

Name: Paul Signac

Country: France

Style: Pointilism, Neo-Impressionism

…

Name: Georges Rouault

Country: France

Style: Fauvism, Expressionism

…

Name: Wilfredo Lam

Country: Cuba

Style: Modernism, Cubism, Surrealism

…

Name: Vincent Van Gogh

Country: Netherlands

Style: Post-Impressionism

in this dark den,
a stillborn game of chess—
characters carefully poised
atop a table for attack; the shadow
of a spider plant, a black afghan,
a map of some unknown peninsula
somewhere near the Arctic ocean

I read in the news
that some explorer once got stranded
off the coastline of Kamchatka—
the snow made him blind
but he didn’t really mind
until he got lost and couldn’t find
the way back to his helicopter—

The brain is a confusing place,
a space of fear and forests
and tests, where the inquisitive
won’t rest until each corner’s
mapped on some handy GPS,
but if passion leads you
to burn all the trees
and ask too many silly questions
you’ll be left with only brushfires
and a bad case of depression

there are places you can only find
when you give it all up
and leave the mind
to follow its own calling

and falling into sleep, I notice
in the dark, a pattern of brocade
I know is green without looking
on the sofa; a clock ticks
and I wonder this:
those scientists who insist that
you can’t see colors in the dark,
they’re wrong, they’re all wrong,
they’re missing the point completely —

and my brain, like a refrigerator
with its invisibly delicate ventricles
void of concepts and numerals
emptying cerebrospinal fluid into the dumps
of a sullen nervous system that pumps
water through the subconscious,
inflow and outflow, exchanging liquids
of life that remain locked inside us,
preparing iced tea for the characters
in my dreams

it’s all good, it’s miraculous
how the elements connect
so spectacularly when at rest —
analysis is a job best left
to the quiet skill of the pineal,
Magritte’s magician,
its surreal juxtapositions
portraying me
in compromising positions—
juggling snow, clock, leaf

and how the cleaning crew comes in,
sweeping the 3am streets
of the corpus callosum
with giant trucks that buzz
their brushes over fallen blossoms
of false hopes, ripped-paper mistakes
that build up and blow in the breeze
causing traffic obstructions

and the cerebellum, didn’t you know
instincts as well can cause disruptions
when not met with their usual interruption
of a much-anticipated coffee break?

tick tock tick tock—
I let my thoughts off their leash
and under the covers, I release my grasp
on the future and the past,
entrusting the world my soul to keep
and allowing myself the silent luxury
of sleep

© Sarah Noack 2007

Rene Magritte

 

 

It’s Belgian Surrealist artist Rene Magritte’s birthday today (1898 -1967). His witty and strange juxtopositioning of everyday objects became talking points in artistic circles in his own lifetime.

The betrayal of images 1953

In a range of paintings which Magritte called ‘The treachery of images’ (1928 1929) the artist draws attention to everyday objects like this pipe by writing underneath it (in French) ‘This is not a pipe’ arguing that the painting was just that, an image of a pipe and not a pipe. That’s the sort of quirkiness that made him controversial at the time. Magritte seemed to do a lot of this, each painting became a riddle. 

the sky image is a trademark of Magritte

Magritte uses several symbols in his imagery – bells, curtains, clouds, apples, umbrellas and raped objects.  These symbols reoccur throughout his art.  It’s as if the artist himself is trying to solve the enigma of these images.  

Gloconde 1953 it's raining men!

Though he collaborated with other surrealists such as Man Ray and Yves Tanguy, his relationship with Andre Bretton (founder) was always rocky. 

the lovers

 When Blegium was invaded by German in 194o, Magritte fled to France.  But his relationship with the Parisian artists was also fraught with dificulties. Magritte adhereing to his own ideas.  By 1953 the artist was commissioned to paint murals that were destined for the Chandelier Hall in Knokke casino (Belgium)  and had also started to make short films.  Magritte was creative all his life and a very innovative artist of his time, always willing to enquire, question and push boundaries.

the human condition

For a more in depth look at the artists life and work look HERE

and  HERE

 

 

]]> http://rannemarie.wordpress.com/2009/11/20/teletourisme-magritte/ Fri, 20 Nov 2009 08:52:08 +0000 raannemari http://rannemarie.wordpress.com/2009/11/20/teletourisme-magritte/

La Une – 13h40 – samedi 21/11

The Treachery of Images - René Magritte (Credit: Wikipedia.org)

I remember one day sitting in ninth grade English class when we were having a discussion on symbolism in literature. Our teacher stood at the chalk board and asked us to list things that were symbolic to us. Listed off were such things as a broken mirror or a wedding ring when I offered the number three.

To this the teacher paused for a moment and then said, “Well, yes. The Holy Trinity is represented by the number three,” and she drew a large ‘3′ on the board.

“No, the number three is a symbolic reference for the abstract idea of three,” I stated.

My teacher and classmates were confused by this. To them, rain clouds and black cats were symbols because they were something a person would use to mean something else, but the number three was a concrete concept, when in fact it represents one of the highest forms of abstract thought man has. But if you had told me at that time that everything we see is symbolic, I would have had as much trouble believing that as my classmates did that three is symbolic. But it is the truth, we don’t see the world, we see a symbolic representation of the world!

How exciting is that concept! I will understand if you have some difficulty coming to terms with this idea. Here is an example to help illustrate this fact:

The Necker Cube (Credit: BenFrantzDale, Wikipedia.org)

This image is called the Necker Cube, after it’s creator, Louis Albert Necker. Most people know this illusion: you stare at the image and a 3D cube appears, and then after a bit a different cube appears. This brings up the question, where is the other cube when the new one appears? This requires a bit of thought. If you were to touch your computer monitor, you would feel a smooth flat surface, not the sharp edges that you see on the cube. That gives us two options:

1. There is a disconnect between our sense of vision and our sense of touch. The object is a cube, but our sense of touch is in error.
2. That our mind actively constructs the cube.

Option 2 is the easier one for me to accept, and we have further evidence that it is correct because we switch between two versions of the cube as our mind switches constructions. Our minds construct a symbolic interpretation of a cube.

We can also look at what our minds fail to construct. Here is an optical illusion known as the lilac chaser. If you stare at the center cross for about 20 seconds, something rather amazing happens.

Source: Jeremy Hinton; Wikipedia.org

As you could see, the grey space between the dots appears to become a green dot, and then suddenly the green dot gobbles up the lilac dots as it goes around the circle.

These two cases bring up an important point, that we construct the reality that we see. In one case, we constructed two boxes where in actuality none existed, in the other, we removed what was actually there. You might think that these are rather extreme or limited cases, but actually construction takes place actively all the time.  Take a look at these two videos, which describe the “hollow face mask” illusion.

What you see in the hallow face mask illusion is the brain actively constructing a view of reality based on what it expects to see. My favorite filmmaker, Errol Morris, once said “Reality is reenacted inside our skulls routinely. That’s how we know about the world. We walk around in the world, the world isn’t walking around in us.”

This brings me back to the painting I included at the beginning of this essay, René Magritte’s The Treachery of Images.

The Treachery of Images - René Magritte (Credit: Wikipedia.org)

The caption to this painting translates to “This is not a pipe.” Magritte commented on this caption by saying, “”The famous pipe. How people reproached me for it! And yet, could you stuff my pipe? No, it’s just a representation, is it not? So if I had written on my picture ‘This is a pipe,’ I’d have been lying!” That’s something I really want to convey through this blog: that images are our way of interfacing with reality. It’s by no means correct, complete, or accurate, but it’s what we have. And the more we understand the process, the more we will not only understand about ourselves, but also the world around us.

je déteste mon passé et celui des autres. Je déteste la résignation, la patience, l’héroïsme professionnel et tous les beaux sentiments obligatoires.

Je déteste aussi les arts décoratifs, le folklore, la publicité, la voix des speakers, l’aérodynamisme, les boyscouts, l’odeur du naphte, l’actualité et les gens saouls.

j’aime l’humour subversif, les tâches de rousseur, les genoux, les longs cheveux des femmes, les rêves des jeunes enfants en liberté, une jeune fille courant dans la rue.

je souhaite l’amour vivant, l’impossible et le chimérique. Je redoute de connaître exactement mes limites.

Magritte.

I don’t like Jim Carrey. But I love his official website!

Be careful when you check out www.jimcarrey.com, you might get dizzy. It’s how I imagine an LSD trip (no, never tried it). A friend of mine described it as ‘Magritte-like’.

Screenshot of the Jim Carrey home page

The downside of this engaging and fun Flash site is its long loading time. But it’s worth it.

“I think that the best title for a picture is a poetic title.”

René Magritte

Magritte is quickly becoming an artist that the brownbookproject is keen to know more about.   Last weekend the bbp attended the Magritte exhibition in Brussels that chronicles the different stages of his life and work.

The most I am able to say is that his work is extraordinary.  His surrealist paintings, which we preferred over the impressionist phase, have very calming qualities; of which one I found was the there was no pressure to interpret his paintings! How relaxing.

Alina, Queen Bee (QB),  and I,  Hawk Eye (HE), agreed that it also looked like he had a lot of fun with his friends. We came away with our favourites and much to consider.

The exhibition was rounded off with a kebab.

Alina then showed us around Brussels a bit more and took us to some very nice bars, and it can be said of the Belgians (for I make no distinction between the Flemish and the Wallons) that they are very friendly. Brussels: nice and friendly. Unless you are an immigrant that is.

On the cold but sunny November Sunday we took the train to Bruges. The trip was part inspired by the film In Bruge and part inspired by Claire Wrathall’s visit which she wrote about in the FT back in October (click http://bit.ly/133nP9 for full article).  On the way I read Sigrid Rausing’s Lunch with FT, which wasn’t really that revealing, but it did remind me of my work experience at Sigrid’s imprint Portobello Books.  So much so that we are running the first brownbookproject competition this week with a prize of a Portobello title published in 2008.  All you need to do to be in with a chance is answer the following question:

Portobello’s plush offices in Holland Park occupy what used to be a pub where my dad used to drink (late 1960s). What was the name of that pub?

Please email your answer to robertjsullivan.esq[at]gmail.com and we will pick the winner at random.

But back to Bruges: The overall purpose though was to just see Bruges rather than to engage with Bruges. Its reputation as a tourist destination did not disappoint and although it is a cosy and inoffensive place, I couldn’t imagine going there in the summer or operating a life within the boundaries of its canals.

And one final word of warning before I wish you Happy Sunday. If in Brussels I would advise that you avoid a place called Ciabatta Mania.

Happy Sunday!

Esta semana foi marcada por dois fatos inéditos em minha carreira fotográfica.

Um destes fatos foi o convite do meu colega de trabalho, Paulo Arrivabene, que é publicitário, diretor de arte e um “monstro” do Photoshop, para ajudá-lo em uma releitura de uma obra do artista René Magritte.

Gosto de inovar e contribuir direto ou indiretamente com a disseminação da arte, e quando isto é aliado a facilidade, melhor ainda.

Eu precisava fazer apenas duas fotos. Uma foto do modelo vestido de terno e gravata e outra foto de close no rosto. Moleza! Montamos um “studio” e fizemos as fotos.

O trabalho pesado ficou por conta do Paulo.

O Resultado final está ai e foi batizado de “Full of Life”:

Os detalhes:

Mais sobre Magritte

Saudações,

Ueliton Santos

So, here it is. My final project for my Intro to Photo class. I didn’t include all of the prints that I made, because there are a few that I think drag down the rest of the images, but I am very happy with how most of them turned out. My concept was, to shoot portraits of people that I care about and to have their identities obstructed in some way by an object that is metaphorically representative of the way that I feel about them. They are formally, greatly inspired by Magritte’s work, obviously. Enjoy.

The main challenge that I had with this, was collecting people that I love in order to take their photograph. I really, really wish that my mom, Evan, Shannon and Emily could have been a part of this. Perhaps, I’ll continue this project for a while so that I can complete it for myself. Time constraints on projects like this always seem to be horribly detrimental to the end result.

In other news, yesterday was the last day of classes for Fall quarter. All I have left for finals week is a HUGE project for my Symbol & Icon design class, which will probably turn out like hell because I’ve completely lost motivation for the class and respect for the professor, and I have a final for Art History class, which will definitely be amazing because that class makes me so happy.  I hope that Fall quarter went well for all the other RIT students that read this every now and again.

Also, I would like to express how much I love Cole Rise.

Check out more of his work here.

PS: JACLYN DONNER I WANT TO SEE WHAT YOU’VE BEEN WORKING ON. You too, Nick and Evan.

Painting to Life:  Cloth Girl

Inspired by the Painting “Lovers” by Rene Magritte

Film Created by Jasmine Rao, Greg Saperstein, and Logan Ruppel

Gisteren zijn we met z’n alle van de grafische (2 & 3ba) naar Amsterdam geweest. In de voormiddag hebben we het Van Goghmuseum bezocht, wat iedereen wel ooit eens in z’n leven moet bezoeken… Wij hebben Magritte en zij hebben Van Gogh! De vergelijking gaat zeer goed op, want het interieur en de tentoonstellingsopbouw is zeer gelijkend. Quotes op de muur, tweetalige uitleg naast de werken, persoonlijke brieven/schetsen in glasbakken en vooral een massa aan informatie over de kunstenaar.

In de namiddag heb ik vooral rondgeslenterd tussen de Amsterdamse grachten, waar de die kerstsfeer nu al aanwezig was, altijd leuk. Boekenwinkels doorsnuffeld en zo een paar hele goede vondsten gedaan. Maar vooral, opgemerkt hoe mooi de uithangborden daar wel kunnen zijn. Daarom een kleine selectie:

« L’enculeur est un chic type. Il se fout complètement de la repopulation. Par contre, il pèche par excès de timidité.
En effet, se risque-t-il à l’introduction de sa queue dans le canal urinaire de ses amis ?
La bonne publicité est faite par des enculeurs.
Ainsi, un enculeur dont le violon d’Ingres est le négoce des parfums a imaginé de montrer dans l’étalage de son magasin, au milieu d’un décor champêtre, une magnifique gerbe de fleurs jaillissant d’une chiotte.
Les bons catholiques sont des enculeurs.
En effet, en absorbant le corps de Christ à la Sainte-Table, ils avalent en même temps la queue et l’anus du Seigneur.
Lecteur, vous êtes aussi un enculeur. Quand vous chiez, votre crotte vous encule vous-même. »

• René Magritte, 1946

Magritte était un chic type. Il se foutait complètement des conventions. Par contre, il pèche par sa paradoxalité.
En effet, alors qu’il a créé de nombreuses publicités, il ose tout de même déclarer: « (…) Je déteste aussi les arts décoratifs, le folklore, la publicité, la voix des speakers, l’aérodynamisme, les boy-scouts, l’odeur du naphte, l’actualité et les gens saouls ». FAIL.
Mais Magritte aime « l’humour subversif, les taches de rousseur, les genoux, les longs cheveux de femme, le rêve des jeunes enfants en liberté, une jeune fille courant dans la rue ». On ne lui en tiendra donc pas rigueur.
Lecteurs, j’ai testé pour vous le Musée Magritte et je m’y suis amusée comme une petite folle ! Et tout le mérite en revient à un père de famille qui a ponctué ma visite de chaque salle par un fou rire que j’ai tenté de dissimuler tant bien que mal afin de pouvoir encore profiter des commentaires qu’il offrait à sa fille âgée d’une dizaine d’années.
Comme je suis gentille, généreuse et attentionnée, je vous offre ma citation préférée de cet homme, en plus ou moins référence à ce tableau:

« Et tu vois, là c’est une pomme avec un masque. C’est génial ! »

Et je terminerai par une autre, sortie de la bouche de ce maître du mystère qu’était René Magritte :

« La poésie est une pipe ».

La prochaine fois, je testerai pour vous le concert pour pré-pubères en chaleur.

Set in a beautiful park overooking across the Kolding Fjord in the southern Danish Syddanmark Region, the Trapholt Museum of art, design and handicraft presents a splendid art exhibition this autumn under the title Love at first sight. The exhibition, which runs through February 28, 2010, features works from the famed German Würth collection, making a stroll through 20th century international modern art. From impressionism to expressionism, surrealism, op art and pop art, meet the likes of great names in European and American art: Munch, Baselitz, Magritte, Pissarro, Kiefer, Lichtenstein, Kapoor, Warhol and many others.
more…

!!!

It is not the Saatchi gallery but Jean Francois Detaille slide gallery featuring his private collection of paintings. all this art was made during his performance art shows and none of these pieces where created in longer time than a few minutes and in a extreme al fresco manner. Portraits, landscapes but also love theme artworks. Jean Francois give an homage to Magritte Hitchcock, but also to infamous Madoff . Museum quality art where the strokes of the artist brush ad sensibility can be see in every pieces. Jean Francois Detaille Exhibition show took him from Las Vegas to New York, from his home town of Namur, portrait here in this gallery.

This weekend the brownbookproject will be in Brussels for a special edition of le weekend post.

Activities could possibly include Bruges,  Magritte and an interview with a beer connoisseur.

So from the last work, which I have started to assemble poorly as I don’t have experience or the time and resources to work in plastic, I have started to work into the idea of creating characters.

Immediately I can jump into the idea of creating this fountain man. I may name him Freddy Fountain as a reference to the alliteration of cartoon characters everwhere. I can create a large mask to put over my head in order to make myself into a walking character like the disney ones of disneyland.

I could even go into making other characters Calum Can (Campbell’s soup, warhol), Peter Pipe (Magritte’s pipe), Billy Basketball (Koons equilibrium). I may choose to have all the actual names based on american names due to the amercianisation of disney.

Using the mask as a prop I could travel round the city centre wearing the mask and getting photographed with other people, strangers who want to have their photo taken with a “celebrity”

I then thought about those boards with holes instead of faces so that people could place there heads through and have there photo taken with Freddy fountain.

From this I decided to look into the combination of disney and cartoons. Maybe I could make my own cartoon, or plan it through a storyboard. Maybe I could make a comic strip? But I thought as to what purpose and relevance would a comic strip have to disney? Disney were primarily a moving image cartoon with a stem of comics starting in january 1930 with newspaper smalls. A moving image would be much more relevant.

A cartoon cel could be used to give the idea of the movement without having to make an entire cartoon.

Cels are also very prized collector’s items, this is interesting in making the piece of art seem valuable, a way of hanging it would have to portray this.

The photographs Charles Peterson took offer magic windows into places and emotions we would otherwise never experience.  Here’s what he captured on a truly magical afternoon in 1942, shared with us through the generosity of his son, Don.

It’s a jam session – hardly unusual for Peterson — but this is no ordinary gathering.       

This jam session didn’t take place at some smoky Fifty-Second Street club or a hotel ballroom, but at the Walt Whitman School where Don was a fifth-grade student.  Whitman was an extremely forward-looking school, whose students got to see foreign films, adventurous art, and more.  So when Charles Peterson suggested that some of his musician friends might come down and play for the kids, none of the administrators raised a worried eyebrow. 

Peterson, I assume, had more than one motive — staging a jam session with the finest musicians he knew would bring pleasure to everyone, and the photographs that resulted might very well be charming enough (Hot Jazz in the Schoolroom; Hot Jazz Goes to School) that a major magazine would want to buy them.  Hot jazz, good publicity for the musicians, possibly a paying gig for the photographer.  Considering that Eddie Condon and friends — including Joe Sullivan and Pee Wee Russell, depicted below – were also playing odd daytime gigs in Lord and Taylor’s for the holiday shoppers, any way to let people know about the gospel of Hot would have been welcome.     

I’m sure that Peterson asked his friend Eddie to get the musicians together.  And it’s a tribute to how much these men would have looked forward to playing alongside one another that they woke up early for a non-paying gig, no drinks and nothing to smoke in sight.  For the kiddies!    

To begin: Max Kaminsky, Brad Gowans, Pee Wee Russell, Joe Sullivan, Eddie Condon, Zutty Singleton, perhaps a group Condon had assembled for nighttime work at Nick’s in Greenwich Village:

The band first: Sullivan is poised to launch a powerful right-hand chord, perhaps one of his ringing, thunderous octaves; Zutty is bent attentively over the cymbal, his face both serious and contented.  Pee Wee is, for once, not caught in brave-explorer anguish.  Kaminsky is watching Gowans, who is intent, and Condon is gleefully vocalizing (exhorting, encouraging) and grinning.  In fact, Condon looks even more gleeful than usual: his face looks cherubic, transported, the same age as the students!  

Don pointed out — with amusement — the little boy on the left who is, for the moment, sorry that he has pushed his way into the front row, and is now holding his hands over his ears against the volume.

But there’s more here.  The settling is so atypical — to find these musicians in a large, well-ornamented room (note the plaster decorations on the wall) — is so far from the usual “night club” world of smoke and darkness, that it lends this photo a Magritte aura, as if two worlds have been superimposed on one another, peacefully but oddly.  The effect is intensified when we see those boys and girls, their school clothes all quite neat, except for one little boy in the rear who seems to have gotten the seat of his trousers dirty from his shoes.  Even from the rear, they look so beautifully-tended, as if they should be singing Christmas carols rather than hearing this band explore SOMEDAY SWEETHEART.

One other photographic digression.  I don’t know the speed of Peterson’s exposure, but think it might have been longer than we are accustomed to in this century.  So did he often opt to photograph the musicians when they were holding whole notes (or “footballs”) behind a soloist, expecting that they would be holding still?  I wonder.   

Now to the full band.  If you asked Bobby Hackett if he would like to play his horn alongside his idol, he wouldn’t have had to think about his answer.  And when Louis had a choice (say, at the 1970 Newport Jazz Festival tribute to him which had what seemed like a dozen trumpeters ready to accompany him), he only wanted “little Bobby Hackett,” who found those “pretty notes,” every time.

This famous shot has sometimes been cropped because of its imperfections, such as the soft focus on Gowans and Hackett, and the lighting making Louis’s very sharp suit look just this side of garish.  But the overall effect suggests that Louis is divine or at least from another planet, and has brought his own luminescence with him — a jazz god who has decided to play at being a mortal for an afternoon.  And the viewer’s eye is inextricably drawn to the glowing bell of Louis’s horn — from whence all good things came. 

(It is possible that the group shot below was taken before the close-up, but I trust my readers will not object excessively.)

Can you imagine the sound coming from that now-crowded bandstand?  Its embodiment is on the face of the smiling little girl, whose profile we see at the right.

I would draw your attention to four faces in this photograph.  Louis is hitting a high note or making a point with all the sincere dramatic eloquence he could command.  Head thrown back with emotion, his neck full of energy, his hand on his heart.  And he’s delightedly making the music, with the music, and wholly IN the music.  Look at how lovingly and happily Zutty’s face echoes Louis’s — they went all the way back and had been the best of friends two decades earlier.  Hackett might be taking a breath, but it looks as if he’s ready to laugh with pure joy — as if he can’t contain himself.  And here we see the grown-ups.  Because this was a program for the boys and girls, the adults had to stay off to the side, but I delight in the woman who is to the extreme left, her grin perilously broad, having the time of her life.  (And the older woman who is standing behind her is almost as transported.)

In the late Bob Hilbert’s biography of  Pee Wee Russell, I found this: “Another special date was a benefit at the “progressive” Walt Whitman School in New York in which the guest of honor was Louis Armstrong.  Louis jammed with the Condon band, but the trumpeter drew the line at singing the blues because, as he explained, the only ones he could remember were dirty and not fit for the kids.  For more than an hour, the band thrilled the students and an overflow crowd of adults as well” (141).  

Maybe Louis reached back to 1936 and sang PENNIES FROM HEAVEN for the kids, with its optimistic message, or reminded them that “When you’re smiling, the whole world smiles with you!” 

This photograph, not irrelevantly, reaches forward to Nina Leen’s shots of Louis at the Eddie Condon Floor Show, telling the story of THE THREE BEARS to the children, and the famous shot of Louis in Corona, on the porch, with two little boys, one of whom is paying homage to his friend and idol with a plastic toy trumpet.  Maybe some jazz musicians are hard-pressed to be ideal parents, but Louis deserved a troop of children of his own.  Alas. 

Speaking of children: during a break between numbers, we find Pee Wee as kindly uncle (his usual nature), perhaps responding to the little girl at the bottom right who is smiling).  Louis is holding court, telling a story — look at Hackett’s face!  Condon is watching everything. 

But my attention is always drawn to the little girl in the front row who has turned her head and is clearly saying something defensive or offensive to the child near her.  Those of us who recall elementary school or have taught it know that expression well.  It’s trouble, and whether it’s ”Sally stepped on my dress!” or “Make Timmy stop pulling my hair!”  It doesn’t bode well.  But chaos threatens only when the music isn’t playing.  Music hath charms, we know . . .

Harmony reigns over the land.  That same little girl is now transfixed by the sound of Louis’s horn, its bell less than two feet from her face.  She doesn’t need to clap her hands over her ears.  If she could have gotten closer, she would have, for she knows what she’s hearing!

None of the musicians in this photograph are alive (Max Kaminsky left us in 1994) and most of those boys and girls would be in their eighties now . . . but if any of them see these photographs, I would give a great deal to hear their memories of that afternoon.

As I’ve written, part of the essential charm of these photographs is that Peterson took his camera to places most of us never got to visit.  I wasn’t born in 1942, and if you count up the people in this room, perhaps fifty mortals were able to have this experience.  And it seems to me that the Walt Whitman School is no longer in existence.  So these photos are gifts to us, welcoming us into worlds now long gone.  But Peterson’s gift was also in what he saw and captured for us.  These are living examples of Peterson’s most generous art.

Magritte Slip-Ons, originalmente cargada por the_flying_farnsworth.

No hay nada como llegar a casa y despojarse de todo aquello que esta de mas, lo que nos sobra y lo que nos jode sobremanera.Meter la llave en la puerta e ir corriendo a ponernos comodos,¡ y esas pantuflas¡, benditas zapatillas que nos elevan al mismo cielo, despues de haber recorrido distancias cortas o largas durante todo el dia.
Dice un proberbio indio mas o menos con mis palabras,que no debes juzgar a alguien hasta que hayas caminado algunos kilometros con sus mocasines, pero bastante tiene uno con lo suyo como para andar con los mocasines de los demas.
Yo caminare otro dia por el lado salvaje oeste de la vida, pero por lo pronto me quedo en mi sillon mullido disfrutando de mi realismo magico y sabiendo que las cosas no son en la mayor parte de las veces como las vemos y eso ya lo supo plasmar Magritte como nadie

La compañía Volkswagen a lanzo una nueva campaña para el auto Polo BlueMotion la cual esta basada en obras Surrealista, específicamente de los pintores Salvador Dalí, René Magritte y Hieronymus Bosch.

En cada una de la imágenes se destacan rasgos de cada pintor respectivamente y tratan de expresa el  bajo consumo de combustible de este auto, estos visuales fueron imaginados y creados por la agencia DDB Berlín.

Inspirado en Salvador Dalí

Inspirado en René Magritte

Inspirado en Hieronymus Bosch