MP as Posthumus Leonatus

When I was 16 or 17  I opened a book for it contained a play by Shakespeare I had never even heard of, Cymbeline. The first dialogue I ever read was Act V, Scene IV and it surely ensured that this play became one of my favourites, for it made me wonder how somebody could end up in such a mess - when I later read the entire play I realised that it was more than well deserved ;). Therefore here the beginning of that scene :

First Gaol. You shall not now be stol'n, you have locks upon you:
So graze as you find pasture.
Sec. Gaol.                           Ay, or a stomach.
                              [Exeunt Gaolers.

Post. Most welcome bondage! for thou art a way, 
I think, to liberty: yet am I better
Than one that's sick o' the gout; since he had rather
Groan so in perpetuity than be cured
By the sure physician, death, who is the key
To unbar these locks. My conscience, thou art fetter'd
More than my shanks and wrists: you good gods, give me
The penitent instrument to pick that bolt,
Then, free for ever! Is't enough I am sorry?
So children temporal fathers do appease;
Gods are more full of mercy. Must I repent?
I cannot do it better than in gyves,
Desired more than constrain'd: to satisfy,
If of freedom 'tis the main part, take
No stricter render of me than my all.
I know you are more clement than vile men,
Who of their broken debtors take a third,
A sixth, a tenth, letting them thrive  again
On their abatement: that's not my desire:
For Imogen's dear life take mine; and though
'Tis not so dear, yet 'tis a life; you coin'd it:
'Tween man and man they weigh not every stamp;
Though light, take pieces for figure's sake:
You rather mine, being yours: and so, great powers,
If you will take this audit, take this life,
And cancel these cold bonds. O Imogen!
I'll speak to thee in silence.
...

Eros II

Items in a box  to be carried around.













 I love that idea

You give me reason to live, you give me reason to live...

Eros

Notwendigkeit

Somehow

exigency

  or urgency is essential

Novelty and Art I

Have you ever noticed somebody leaving his own tutorial at academy in absolute disgust and anger - and I'm talking of a tutor really bold and powerfully eloquent, invested with humour, irony and sarcasm?! I did and it was a very disclosing moment, when his many powers failed him. Why, oh why did it happen?

We - a friend and me - had prepared a presentation about Rachel Whiteread, which prominently featured  her Closet 1988, on which Rachel Whiteread herself commented that it was the cast of the inner space of a closet she used to play in as a child, where she would play that she was entering the magical realm of Narnia. To produce this cast she had to demolish this very closet.

What ensued was not a discussion , as one might expect, on the work of art and its implications, something my friend and me were most eager to do and even travelled far - because of the sculptures entitled Plug I had made an outing to a morgue to get a photo of an autopsy table or we had imagined doing the whole presentation at a local morgue - but instead people started imagining procedures of how one may produce a cast of something without destroying the positive. And this was exactly the point the tutor left uttering that if we were interested in technics we should be studying at a technical college instead ;).

Me was also very annoyed at the people who had simply blown our presentation and I still was on the next day, when I met another tutor sitting in the cafeteria and desperately trying to make up a subject for next semester's seminar :). Thus drawing from the experiences of the day before and the fact that he was also a  publisher I suggested that he should propose a seminar about the technical aspects of making a book. And so he did. And never before have I witnessed any of his seminars so full, though of course - and I knew him for this aforehand :) - he never did an outing to a printing press or indeed any at all ;)!

To Be Or Not To Be

Today the sensual side of things is maybe not as much appreciated as the concept, the idea behind it. Yet I gravitate towards the sensation, the sensual side, eg the smell, the haptic, the touch, the actual and I am uttering this oddly in a virtual medium ;D. I do love to get my hands dirty.

 

C'est Belle -C'est Belge

"motherf***ing Disney endings...all the hard faces have come  with tears that are all from laughter"

Conception Art vs Conceptual Art

Of late - in fact on Thursday ;) - I've been reading the wonderful word "conception..." uttered by a musician. I admit that I've always been a little bit turned off by conceptual art for once you've grasped the initial concept, the idea behind it, the actual object becomes obsolete, for all its secrets are revealed. In contrast to this conception offers the metaphor of something growing whilst it is executed. The wonderful possibilty of something completely different entering the world... With my deepest regards to Gustave Courbet, who is absolutely right!

Floating

Memoires d'Aveugle

Somebody daring

...to portray a little fat man, though he himself never actually was. It might just be the director's achievement that every single frame looks like a marvellous painting, but it is the "fat" man's that it does have a soul, a really magnificent one btw.

Second Sight

Sometimes the quality of a drawing only gets visual on second sight, I was very displeased with this one until I realised that just a few lines were missing to make it a wonderful closed image.

Sometimes Movie Stills Entice Me To Draw

James Ensor and Acquaintance

Once I was skipping through a catalogue of Ensor's paintings when I noticed the following photo because there is Ensor in the picture, yet there is also somebody else whom I did not connect with Ensor at all, though I suppose they should have been so familiar, it feels definitely right ;)!

Nightwatching - Visual References (at least one that I have noticed)

I should have noticed earlier but Martin Freeman wearing those various hats as Rembrandt should have reminded me of a painter I admire a lot - in fact if I were to write my own little art history he would feature in one line from Turner to Newman, the marvellous and hilarious James Ensor.

BTW the first thing that won me for Ensor before realising his mastery in painting and colour, was his wry sense of humour, that truly befits an artist. And especially the way he takes it out on himself personally.

Encounter his Self-portrait in 1960.

James Ensor, Self-Portrait in 1960

Sehnsucht - Longing

I'm definitely on to something

For the third time in a week I’ve been carrying a bird in my hands now, two robins and one probably a willow warbler. Robins are by far the bolder birds ;D!

Like Nature

Spirit

Ghost - The Inevitable

"The sun rises at the edge of my glass, casting its hellish light over the inevitable... we're going, we're going to god"

Handarbeit - Handwork

NIghtwatching - The Opening Scene

Watching the opening scene I could not help but draw some iconographic parallels, which might sound a little bit blasphemous but as I will prove, been a topos rather commonly to be found among artists. The thing that came instantly to my mind is due to the fact that I have a Catholic background, how Christ is robbed of his clothes, even down to the fact that the only thing left to him to cover/shelter himself is a loincloth. Artists referring to Christlike figures or assuming that role has precedences like Dürer's self-portrait or Barnett Newman's Stations of the Cross, entitled "Lema Sabachthani"(Why have you forsaken me), which are certainly meant as any man's and especially the artist's primary outcry...

Anton Walbrook and Max Ophüls

The moment I fell for Anton Walbrook was exactly the point, when he realises as König Ludwig that he has lost his artistic paradise. The look of infinite sadness and longing in Ludwig's/Anton's eyes, which was also the look of so many people he had known, Ophüls, Dr Karl Wollf, to name just two, who fortunately had survived Nazi persecution, simply took my breath away. From that moment on I had to know who this man was.
Especially French reviewers have criticised that Ophüls showed the Bavarian king far too favourable, something they did not see was, to my mind at least, that far from telling Lola's history, he told a more recent story, that of Germany inbetween the World Wars, of the artistic freedom and liberties he enjoyed, and sadly of his and others' eventual eviction from this paradise. In its consequences quite chilling. There is also Hilde Ophüls account of Max first visit to Germany after WW2, when he cried inconsolably behind the wheel of his car when some person had remarked that he must be revisiting his native country (Heimat).

Art=Sublimation or The Sublime Is Now (Barnett Newman)

I still write a little every day: only a little, but I do write. And then in the evenings Levitan might come knocking at my window - 'Are you there, crocodile?' - and I let him in and we talk. He has terrible fits of melancholy these days, but if I tell him a funny story he rolls on the floor with pleasure and kicks his feet in the air. But his work is deteriorating: he no longer paints with a feeling of youth, but with a sort of bravura. I think the women have worn him out. It's impossible to paint a landscape without a feeling of pathos, of ecstasy, and ecstasy is impossible when you've gorged yourself. If I were a landsacpe artist I'd live quite an ascetic life: I'd have intercourse once in a year, and I'd eat once a day.   Anton Checkhov, as quoted by the lovely Michael Pennington in his play "Anton Checkhov", cf Are You There Crocodile?-Inventing Anton Checkhov" by Michael Pennington, p 269.

Mycroft and Watson

What I particularly love about this scene is the fact that it's not just Mycroft playing cat and mouse with John Watson but if one considers that Mark Gatiss is playing Mycroft, a rather intriguing dimension is added. For here the creator is toying with his creation and he is from the looks of it damn sure of his power. Poor John simply has no choice but to go the way he directs him. And thinking of the possibilities that this encounter offers/ plays on, things could get very interesting in the future. My personal view is that Dr Watson is by far the more interesting character and it's simply marvellous how this formerly dull sidekick has become a multi dimensional being. Especially in this scene I began asking myself which of the both is more disturbed/insane, Sherlock or John?!

Things to get excited about on the Tube- twenty years later

This may mark the beginning of some train stories - travelling by train is or used to be a far more exciting journey than any other vehicle could provide. I do most vividly remember this incident and as it was both silly and dangerous - at least according to a French friend, who had been living several years in London - it is worth telling. 

In April 1991 - being pregnant in the sixth month, though nobody but my boyfriend knew - I spent 10 days in London on an excursion of the fine art department of the Westfälische Wilhelmsuniversität Münster. On a Saturday afternoon I, completely on my own, met those three guys, who were about my age, ie late teens/early twenties. They did look like, to use a neutral term, football supporters, but found it exceedingly funny amongst themselves to tell me that they had just been to Kew Gardens. And soon they had an even funnier idea, which was to find out where I was coming from. I heard about every European nation, Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Sweden and even Ireland - I wasn't aware of the fact that I looked so mundane. One country was missing quite blatantly, but probably one they did not connect with women on the Tube they were trying to chat up. So finally they gave up and asked me and I told them with a smiling face: "Germany".  

Visual Illiteracy

In his documentary "Rembrandt J'Accuse" Peter Greenaway claims that most people (maybe our entire culture) is visually illiterate, ie not able to "read" an image properly, and going on he says that else we would not have such an "impoverished cinema". As a silent movie fan I must say he is right at that point,  visual expression was  very much neglected when the talkies arrived, early talkies tried to encorporate both means of articulation, ie words rather added a dimension to what you are seeing, but soon sadly the word would take over. One of the worst movies I have ever watched was "Last Man Standing", for I almost left the cinema yelling because I was told by the "inner voice" of the main character what I had just been seeing, but probably  Walter Hill, the director, did not trust the audience's abilities or he was just planning the commercial breaks already. Fact was that I couldn't watch because I was talked to all the time.
So in fact I'm now thinking about "Peter Greenaway J'Accuse"....

In Memoriam Richard Hamilton

Just what is it that makes today´s homes so different, so appealing?

In commemoration Raimund has cited a sentence by Richard Hamilton : "You know, painting has the biggest history, painting has the biggest future." What a marvellous thing to say and a hope I genuinely share, for I might add, something that I've said in the 1990s: If we cannot execute paintings anymore, we will no longer be able to perceive/ understand them. Here Peter Greenaway does have a point about us being visualy illiterate, yet I believe if stimulated most people are capable of employing a little bit more perception when looking at something. It really isn't so hard, just do not take everything for granted.

And oddly it coincides with a virtual discussion about photography being art I joined only yesterday, here is my reply: About photography being art. Yes, of course photography can be art or artificial and it would be better for most of us if we were to consider the latter, ie its implemented artificiality, a little bit thoroughly when looking at photos. Most people take photography to be a direct image (I like the German Abbildung here very much) of reality and are not aware of the fact that they might be manipulated, some with great sophistication and others you can tell, but as the means are getting more sophisticated I guess the product does as well.

BTW: Pop Art is American and Punk British, right?! ;D

Chekhov and Great Britain

Why is it that the two British actors I admire the most do refer to Chekhov? One of them even dresses up as Chekhov regularly to be him for approx two hours in a really fantastic one man play. Why does Chekhov so prominently figure in  British performing art or is this just a coincidence? ;D

Similarities

For a while now I have been pondering about Joos van Cleve and Tom Barman, since when I first saw the van Cleve's self-portrait it reminded me so much of Tom Barman, ;D! Comparing pictures of both they could be the same person.

On The Train From Münster to Düsseldorf

I remember talking to somebody about the tragic in abstract monochrome painting - maybe because I wanted to do a doctorate on it - and he advised me to have a look at the Rothko chapelle, that was in the late 90s ;)!

Tim and Neil Finn

Okay my favourite by Crowded House

Queen Mab - This Will All Make Sense In Good Time

Today unexpectedly my dream came true, as I was holding my robin in my hands. Obviously it had hit a nearby window as it was sitting rather dizzy on the ground. I fetched it up to put it somewhere more save (from cats etc) and it wasn't afraid. Just so tiny, even in my hands, whom most people would rather take for a child's because of their size ;D, yet its claws were very steady and held onto my hands until I had placed it in a hedge.

Without Actual Comment

Possibly the best song ever to come from New Zealand, I even admit owning a record by Tim Finn, I bought back in the late 80s! (Alright his brother Neil and Crowded House was also great)

Il Faut Bien Manger

Il faut bien manger - Well, one has to eat - Man muß wohl essen.

Jacques Derrida

Kunstbetrachtung - Interpreting Art

Giulio Paolini, 1981: Kannst Du einen Schlüssel zur Interpretation geben? Unbedingt alles vereinfachen zu wollen, ist immer schwierig und außerdem unnötig. Ein Bild zu malen, bedeutet nicht, es zu rechtfertigen, es verständlich zu machen oder ihm eine künstliche Bedeutung zu geben. Vielmehr geht es dabei um das Aufdecken von etwas unwiderstehlichem, und darum, diesem ein Gesicht zu verleihen, es zu entdecken.

Giulio Paolini, 1981: Can you provide a key for the interpretation? Unconditionally to want to simplify everything has always been difficult and unnecessary. To paint a picture doesn't mean to justify it, to make it comprehensible or to provide an artificial meaning. It rather deals with the uncovering of something irresistible, and to give a face to it, to discover it.

Art - Art Forgery - Art Market

" Ihr könnt nicht Gott dienen und dem Mammon".- "You can not serve both God and Mammon."









When I first encountered the word "Mammon" on a printed card in a church at the age of seven or eight, I turned to my mother to enquire what it means...

And she replied "money".

The falstaffian Hamlet or vice versa

The world is out of joint oh cursed spite that ever I was born to set it right

Kunstmarkt und Kunstfälschung - aus gegebenem Anlaß

"Im Reich der Zwecke", sagt Kant," hat alles entweder einen Preis, oder eine Würde. Was einen Preis hat, an dessen Stelle kann auch etwas anderes, als äquivalent, gesetzt werden; was dagegen über allen Preis erhaben ist, mithin kein Äquivalent verstattet, das hat eine Würde."
Konsequent zu Ende gedacht, was wäre dann ein Kunstmarkt, wenn man Kunst unter die Kategorie des Originalen also Nicht-Äquivalenten fassen würde?!

PS: translation: "In the realm of functions", says Kant, "everything bears either a price or dignity. Whatever has a price may be replaced by other equivalent items, whatever is above all price, consequently has no equivalent, has got dignity."
Thoroughly thought through, what would be an art market, if one would consider the category of the original (work of art) as being non-equivalent.

Forget Anthony Hopkins and Hannibal Lecter

Recently I've watched Men Only and there was this final scene, whicg scared me to death. Especially the moment when Jamie watching a porn realises what is going on in the next room and all the sudden his eyes start to change. There is this absolutely chilling merciless look of the predator - or even horrifyingly surpassing this - getting ready for the kill.

Opening Fire

Let's see what will happen:

Aim for the eyes and shoot