Wide Difference continued

No comment ;D

Wide difference - C'est la Differance

Where I was taught of your chaste daughter the wide difference 'twixt

amorous

and

villanous

I'd love to see Martin Freeman in a classical Screwball Comedy - it don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing

Returning again to Swinging with the Finkels and revealing the scene I really loved, which was the one on the bench with the dog interspersed with this silly flashbacks - I was not sure if it was Grunge or the 70s but the wig was very weird. Here I had the idea that Martin was altogether in a different movie, something more romantic or screwball. Now this song came to my mind, which proposes a certainly more interesting aspect of swing(ing) and one that would secure lasting passion. Hope for everybody to be lucky enough to encounter it in real life ;).

PS: There is a difference between sex and eroticism, though spitefully it is not well-observed nowadays.

".........Where I was taught,
of your chaste daughter the wide difference
'Twixt amorous and villanous.........."

Nightwatching Part V

Visualising it

Oh, colour I adore. I can see from the movie that Peter Greenaway simply knows what he wants and how he wants the picture to look like. The hardest thing is yet to hunt for the perfect resemblance between vision and product.- Once when I was designing a poster for my school's English Drama Group and I knew the colour had to be violet and I stated so to other people, yet for lack of the colour I did it in blue. Now comes the funny part, one of us went to have the poster colour-copied, when I got a call saying that the copy cannot be done in exactly the hue but it had to be tinted, either red or yellow (it's been decades I wonder if I remember the other colour correctly). Absolutely excited I said, "For god's sake, red!" When the posters arrived, they were exactly like I had envisioned them and even the other people finally saw it - With this movie I also feel that the vision - like eg the blue and yellow of the flag (it takes my breath away) - has been translated.
Having Rembrandt in the drapery commenting on the fabric, its colour and texture - I can relate to this so very much, if I myself do this, it's pure synaesthesia, to touch it, to smell it, the colour . It's like being high on this, these are my drugs.- This is something that has happened to me before when watching a Greenaway movie, eg in The Cook, the Thief.... when the wife and the lover have sex between the rotting flesh, I definitely could smell this strange sweet odour of rotting and my husband on the other hand thought that the lover looked quite tasty in the end :)

"Iiintérésting continue"*

This interview  is really interesting. Rage and especially this kind of rage is a very important - and maybe right - feeling. At least it reveals that the person concerned is not indifferent and if canalised the right way into the right direction it will bring great creative power. Somebody with heart and soul.

Barnett Newman, Lace Curtain for Mayor Daley, an artist's protest against police brutality towards anti-Vietnam War demonstrators

*Basil Rathbone as King Louis XI

I'd love to see Martin Freeman in a classical Screwball Comedy

Oh je, I've watched Swinging With the Finkels and all I could be thinking of is the above phrase, especially since there were some really lovely scenes done on his own...He would need somebody with whom the chemistry is absolutely fab though - I'd suggest Amanda Abbington ;) and then there is this lovely song, with reference to milk and cow (Finkels) and One, Two, Three - certainly one of the best comedies ever, original script by a Hungaro-Austrian and directed by an exiled Austrian, lol!

Oh my God!!!!

Nightwatching - Truth in Painting

Like I've mentioned before I do not believe that movies could ever picture the historical facts, nor do I believe that it was predominantly intented in Nightwatching. To me the whole plot tells a story
 that might have been approximately like this or not.

Yet this does not imply that the movie is not telling the truth about its subject, ie Rembrandt and the story of the creation of a work of art. To me the historical murder story is just a subplot, a parergon, that enables Greenaway to discuss deeper relationships, eg between life and art or sexual desire and art or art and the art market, art and money. Maybe even down to the question if the artist is only just a craftsman and that he sometimes lacks intellectual capacities.

 Some of the really telling scenes are the opening scene, the scene when Rembrandt is asked to show his hands, and the ones  that touched me personally the most Saskia's death and the mating with Hendrikje, there is a feeling of apotheosis to this one, very delicate and very beautiful indeed.

Dinge in der Schachtel - items in the box

Dinge in der Schachtel                    Items in the box

und besonders Dinge auf der Schachtel,               and especially items on the box,
dienen der Erinnerung                                             serve your memory

Ik hou van alle vrouwen

It's Dutch and it fits...

Nightwatching material IV

Peter Greenaway has identified Rembrandt's eye in the Night Watch, in fact this is the final image we are getting. Being a very visual person like Greenaway I can definitely see the point, though our view on the phenomenon of the painting may differ, in that he is looking for a story the painting is telling in its (historical) context whereas I am asking what is it telling me now, what impact does it have on my personal life, what is its eternal present.

Anyway Arthur C Danto, whom I had mentioned in the other post, in his gedankenexperiment and its conclusion is also referring to Rembrandt's eye, so we have basically the same move from the Night Watch to Rembrandt's eye. Danto explains that what distinguishes the original work of art always from the no matter how perfect copy is the artist's eye. In Rembrandt's case, it is to Danto his loving and caring look - especially in his drawings of Hendrikje - in which he shows everything even the signs of physical decay, but never exposes them.

Wir ersetzten die Visionen durch Konzept

Ich habe wirklich nicht viel gegen Konzeptkunst, ganz wunderbar, Leben und Leben lassen, schön. Was mir aber immer fehlt an der Konzeptkunst ist dieses bißchen an Mehr, eine Vision und dies ist natürlich im besonderen transzendent gemeint

Wat is kunst? - de blik in zijn ogen -dat is kunst

Oh my god, I've been staring at this sketch for almost an hour now and I cannot stop. What have I done? I cannot come to terms with it, I'm seeing all at once; every detail and the whole at the same time. Usually I'm very bad at sketching or drawing, simply awful and I never catch what I intended. At the academy people kept repeating I should try drawing, but I am a painter, it's colour, painting it layer for layer almost shining through what I'm interested it - it's a passage.
Yet what have I got here, the expression on the face is forward and closed at once, there are in fact  two faces to be seen, one painted, superficial and the other that is more true, a person facing you. It's looking at me and it is telling me something about himself, yet it is also an entity I can never fully grasp or define. I cannot possess this person. On a more formal basis I'm also seeing both at once, the (concrete) lines that make up the (abstract) face, I've tried to concentrate on the single aspect, it's hard to achieve, because every time I do I just realise how those lines fit in perfectly and none is too much and there is no line missing. Everything falls in place, like it was planned from the beginning of all time.
Then I had to realise that Michael is still right, I could spend a decade or hundred years trying to resketch this - I will never achieve it. Arthur C Danto's gedankenexperiment of the computer recreating by chance Rembrandt's Nightwatch - yes in the book The Transfiguration of the Commonplace it is the Nightwatch! - for me is now resolved: even if there was a painting computer who would have the time to try for aeons, it would never make it happen because every single line, decision by the artist - or in fact by whomever - is the product of the most singular present/ presence, and this presence/ present is almost a nothing, a strange point - with the mathematical extension of nil - inbetween the past and the future. Nothing one could actually grasp, try to catch the moment, and then think about the fact that scientist's are saying that our brains are always a tick behind the now.

Leuven of Leiden -who cares

 

ik ben op zoek naar liefde
ik ben op zoek als verliezer
de dood in haar armen
naar ocharme, ocharme

Nightwatching Part III

Peter, I've been listening to an interview, where you stated that you do not particularly like Rembrandt van Rijn - an interesting contrast to Martin Freeman's perception he reveals on the DVD extras btw. Fact is I can definitely see why you do not actually love this person - pompous, self-absorbed. It reminded me of the fact that I used to paint monochromic abstract paintings  just in red for several years, and only one single hue of red btw. As it was at the academy and people were passing by, this was noticed of course. So one day somebody commented: "You must be loving red"."On the contrary", I replied," I hate it, but that is fine because this way I can do whatever I like to it". Yet the outcome and truth was more complicated since by the end I was adoring red.

 Maybe it's just Martin Freeman's excellent portrayal and the way he really achieved what he declaredly set out to do, which was play Rembrandt like a real person struggling with everyday problems and not the iconic painter, that made me feel deeply for this man - at the end I must admit I was in love. Yes, he is pompous and self-absorbed and frankly losing so much touch with reality as to set out to publically insult or accuse his powerful clients, makes it even worse. Self-indulgent idiot, who must show off his intelligence and who believes that nobody can get at him. And yet this is only one side, isn't it?! He could be Hamlet shouting out "Something is rotten in the state of Denmark (the Netherlands)" and there is the moral disgust he is feeling at actually the same issues Hamlet is facing, murder, double moral standards, incest,  colonialism. No, Amsterdam was not a nice place to live in and revealing it this openly - at least as far as the plot of this movie is concerned (I won't be commenting on wether I believeit to be historically correct because that's not a point that seems important to me, as this movie is a work of art and that's how it should be treated - anybody watching a movie and saying, yes ,this is the way it was, is a moron to me, sorry) - needs a disgusted and courageous person with high moral standards. So now we've got to a quite interesting point, something that varies from the usual perception of an artist as a morally at least questionable person, like in Anton Walbrook's favourite poem by his great-grandfather Wilhelm August Wohlbrück, it is the artist, who is just in giving each person his true deserts. I surely love the image of the eye at the end, and yes Peter, here you are right, we should learn to employ it properly and not superficially, and maybe I fancy also the idea that this eye might be love. Once more Martin Freeman is simply amazing in giving his character exactly this contradictory depth.

Nightwatching - Impacts I (hopefully)

Leidseplein, Amsterdam 1996

Miserable Nightwatching

Without comment

Loose Mimes in real life

Thinking of mimes in the wild - and I'm not talking stage performances here, two quite antithetical experiences come to my mind.

Decades ago I've been to  Maastricht with a friend of mine. There is this really beautiful square, the Vrijthof, in front of the cathedral, with a lot of cafes and pubs around. And as we would come to notice it was also the hunting-ground for a mime, who spoofed passers-by. One woman was very unfortunate indeed, as he sat down at her table parodying her every move, poor woman, there was no way she could defend herself.

On the other occasion there was a mime on a pedestal at a crowded promenade, posing like a sculpture, ocasionally waving at passers-by or shaking their hands. This time it was, I regret to say, the poor mime who was hunted or rather haunted by our children. They were very intrigued, standing in front of him taunting him and trying get any reaction, we were not really able to drag them away.

Nightwatching - have you ever done it?!

Come to think of it, it is really hard to find a location in Europe, where one might actually watch the night, as it was intended to be. The only time this has ever happened to me was in a very remote place, Dartmoor, in the middle of nowhere. Never before and never again I've seen this darkness in nature and never shone the stars as bright and were as close as at this instance.

Darkness, blackness is of course an issue that several artists have been intrigued  by , e g there was the story of Joseph Beuys, who allegedly - I haven't actually been there - found the darkest black sooty stovepipe, he once put into a wall.

To me personal there can be a lot happening in dark spaces, like in Barnett Newman's Prometheus Bound, there is a whole drama hidden in it, and something I heard btw also, when I first encountered it there was a flourish, and every painting else got obsolete, I was absorbed. The second time I visited it during a retrospective in Düsseldorf, I spent a considerable time in front of it. Apparently too much for the museum attendant, who got behind me - like Newman suggests I always get as close as possible. The exhibition had been on for some time, so the painting should not have been that new to the attendant, yet suddenly I heard a yell behind me: "Kommt schnell, da ist was, ich habe was gesehen/ Come quickly, there is something I've seen something."  I couldn't help but turn, smile at her and be a little bit jealous at this marvellous moment of discovery. She was absolutely right and absolutely right to yell in the museum. Hallelujah!

Nightwatching Part II

...and male potency and art or producing art. Tonight for some reason or the other ;) - this issue became all of a sudden very dominant to me. There are three women, Saskia, Geertje and Hendrikje and they all do resemble aspects of potency and especially potency to create. The first mentioning of potency is though the male prerogrative of boasting how little time it takes for them to create - a child. 10 seconds or 5 who is faster... An important issue to the creative artist indeed.

Yet Saskia is the one who will bear the child, so the relationship is in every aspect a fruitful and fulfilling one (but behold the daughters who have died on them!), potency and commerce married to each other, the perfect match, yet she dies. Interesting that when she is buried, Rembrandt gets into the water up to his loins, I couldn't help but notice and of course it had an instant sexual annotation.

And Geertje is the barren one, no child, no creativity, simply sex for sex' sake, something pornographic, check Umberto Eco's wonderful insights into porn movie. The potency is so utterly wasted on her and turns into something self-destructive.

But behold there is the angel, somebody always present in Rembrandt's darkest moments, somebody he will disclose his deepest secret to and somebody he knows he could entrust it with, Hendrikje. She will bear him till the end, as he will bear her, the potency in every aspect returns.

But are the women as the driving or destructive force not superior to the vain men?!

Nightwatching material III

My personal copy of Jacques Derrida's Aufzeichnungen eines Blinden and the two drawings by Rembrandt that have been exhibited.

Tobias restoring his father's eyesight , only ascribed !

Jacob's dream

Nightwatching links I

Just one kiss of memory, accumilate your history... dress and play is all that you can do...unrepeated intertwine... feel the power of the night  , you know the night can never last (on second listenening it's feel the power of the now and "you know the now can never last, still it fits exactly)...how does it feel now to be free.. you live in a constant now. Listen to dEUS' new song Constant Now. I feel it has a lot to tell about Nightwatching...

Sometimes I have to connect like this...;)

We are the stuff that dreams are made on

Well, alright I've discovered my heart for some actor, and Tim, if you are reading this, I'm sure you will know whom. So I've watched The Good Night last night and was rather disappointed how a good idea or issue could be messed up by treating it in a very unimaginative way. The movie goes on and on without much evolution and then in the final ten minutes it develops some good ideas, but does not work them out, and the ending left me unsatisfied like it followed the fashionable concept of having a final catch. Here is my review from imdb, I gave it 7 out of 10, which is about the worst vote I've ever given :).

My vote is somehow better than I would give if it were not for the acting.

The story, I'm afraid is sort of a letdown and in the days of virtual reality seems far too dated. Somebody getting absorbed by his dreams feels so obsolete in these days when there are so much more real and effective ways to dilute your mind.

The final catch does not really come as a surprise, it's something like "the perfect kiss is the kiss of death", Gary finally ends his quest - or was it Mel's - and ends up in the perfect dream.

I've not yet made up my mind if this movie is a satire, mocking its characters, or if it is a more serious drama. In the best case it would be both, in the worst none actually and just talky I'm afraid. My personal view on dreams, which gets also touched in the course of the story, is that they do encourage you to make them real.

Btw my personal view on dreams is rather like Peter Gabriel's in his song about Anne Sexton, Mercy Street: "All of the buildings and all of the cars were once just a dream in somebody's head!

Silent Movie Acting Is No Mime

Imagine a team given just 48 hrs to create a short movie and then you've go the concept of 48 Hour Film Project. This is Far From Home Films' entry to the last year's London competition, and it deservedly won them some of the awards.

Basically it is a silent movie starring a mime and that's about all I'd like to tell about the story. For the thing that really intrigued me as a silent movie aficionado is that Lillian Gish insisted on the fact that silent movie acting was no mime and now here we've got people exactly playing with this idea. The mime really lives in his mime world, in contrast to the "real" world of his girlfriend. Yet the excellent Martin Freeman as the mime manages to subtly work out emotions that run beyond the mime's painted surface. If you come across it at a short film festival in your vicinity, be sure to catch it.

Also irgendwie

Die Hoffnung, The Girl Is  Mime doch vor 2012 zu sehen, habe ich noch nicht ganz aufgegeben. Es scheint jedenfalls Möglichkeiten zu geben. Dies nur zur Dokumentation, denn es ist so gelungen, daß ich mich wohl schweren Herzens davon trennen werde und es an die Quelle zurückschicken werde. Wer auch immer kann mir ja die Daumen drücken.

Nightwatching material II

The opening scene and its follow-up reminded me also of Derek Jarman, first of all of his overwhelming movie "Blue", something I could not bear watching in one sitting because as a predominantly visual person myself, somebody who has studied painting, I know how much it hurts to have taken away the capacity to see from oneself. So first reference Blue

And then in the second scene when talking with Hendrikje about colours, I was reminded of Jarman's book Chroma, which I recomment to any painter because of its insight into the matter of colour.

Cover of the English edition

Cover of the German edition

I read this book as a preparation for a talk I delivered on Derek Jarman's Garden at my academy.

Nightwatching material

This is a scan Howard Hodgkin's acceptance speech for the Shakespeare Prize, and refers to himself as a "rather fat elderly man"

Nightwatching Part I

This is to document my review on imdb and maybe to give it some more depth because this will come to be a very complex matter and one that takes me again close to my heart and the person I used to be and hopefully still are, so let it begin.

This will not be your usual review, watch this space as I go along
watching this so far excellent movie.

The first scene I've chosen to watch was the scene in which Rembrandt
is drawing the dead Saskia, my first reaction and it was an emotional
response was that I was crying with my tears streaming down my face,
all the while I was intellectually realising that Rembrandt was
learning an important lesson at this very moment. Whereas in his works
and paintings he is the creator and god, he cannot for one iota change
or influence what is going on in the "real" world. His potency
regretfully does not stretch that far, moreover he has to submit to it
and feels as defenseless as a little child. Somehow lines from my
favourite Shakespeare play Cymbeline keep coming to my mind and so they
be here "You snatch some hence for little faults; that's love,;To have
them fall no more"! Indeed a moving scene and I'm sure that I've only
just scratched its surface. Important question raised what impact does
art have on life and vice versa?
Added August 16th: Now I've watched the opening scene I come to realise that my initial responses were correct, in a way I should have thought of much earlier. One of my favourite books is Memoires d'Aveugle:L'Autoportrait et autres Ruines/Memoirs of the Blind: The Self-Portrait and Other Ruins. Basically it's the catalogue of an exhibition of drawings curated by Jacques Derrida. Its main topics are art, blindness and truth and it feels like Peter Greenaway is talking about exactly the same, add maybe the dilemma between art and life to it.
Other references watching the second scene would maybe escape people who are not really into the matter, but one of the hues of yellow is distilled from the urine of cattle that have been poisoned before. Just to show that this is a highly complex movie...

Ehre, wem Ehre gebührt, for his superb portrayal, which will still be subject of my future posts Martin Freeman needs to be tagged. His Rembrandt is a wonderful little fat man the like of William Turner or nowadays Howard Hodgkin - I believe this to be exactly the image Hodgkin once used.

What's happening anyway

First there is this song

Just sounds like my first name, followed by  this on my favourite radio station

reminding me of this

Well this is my birthday, well every year's second one...
Strange days indeed. The point is to be ready anyway...

Gotcha caught up still

Now the allegedly most English bird of them all has been bothering me again, only this time not for real but in my dreams. Oh Mercutio, please tell me about Queen Mab , some more.

PS: Just when I was posting this I heard this song for the first time ;)

Überdacht und ent-deckt, ja es ist da

I've been thinking and studying the image. Like Derrida mentioned drawing has something to do with being blind. Your fingers, your charcoal, your pencil recreates something that is beyond vision, yet though this drawing as a whole appears oddly uneven to me, I've found the thing I had been blind about before and yes it is there, I've caught it and here is it:

Frankly I cannot believe that it was hidden in there... And it has this element of coincidence as well as it was the fixative spray that made it eventually happen. The lines are natural, which is the best one may achive. OMG

Gotcha caught up in the web ;)

Again....

Zu-Fall, aus gegebenem Anlaß/ just for the occasion

Today is again a day to consider the stranger coincidences in my life. So here is the one for today: my children were born - in this order - on the 14th (today), the 21st and the 28th of their respective birthmonths. My Lovely Numbers Seven! All my daughters were born on a Wednesday and all my sons on a Sunday. Happy birthday Debora!

What are actors actually thinking while shooting a scene?!

I'm aware of the fact that this sounds highly provocative, but yet it somehow fits in the line of my last few posts. After it has been established by the commentary contained on the official DVD  that in this scene from Sherlock

Benedict Cumberbatch was indeed - as I had been perceiving - very much worried about his tight suit and the vicinity of the swimming pool, I wonder if I'm also right about Martin Freeman's thoughts and what his bodylanguage and facial expressions are telling. My thoughts were the following: So I'm John Watson, Sherlock doesn't have a clue and will be surprised at the possibility that  John may in fact be Moriarty.  John won't let him be in doubt for long though and reveal his true state as the pawn in this lethal game as soon as possible. As soon as the word "heart" gets mentioned by John or rather Moriarty, John realises that everything Sherlock will have to offer is but a McGuffin, the real target is Sherlock and John is his most vulnerable point, so from this point onwards John will look for any opportunity to let Sherlock off this most dangerous hook disregarding his own life...I'm certainly intrigued by this histrionic potency of making my imagination run wild, very well done indeed.

The Girl Is Mime and The Magic Flame

One of my - regretfully presumed lost - favourite silent movies is The Magic Flame, it stars Ronald Colman in a double role as  Tito, a circus clown, and Count Cassati, unscrupulous womanizer and heir apparent to the Illyrian throne. Tito accidentally kills Cassati on a row concerning Bianca, an aerial artist, and is forced to assume Cassati's part unless he would have to face a murder charge. Bianca presuming that Cassati has killed Tito sets out to assassinate "Cassati". Check it out on my site and there is also part of the translation of a French novelization here, drop down the "Novelization of Silents" button to be able to read more.

Regarding the short film The Girl Is Mime, I only now after contacting Tim Bunn realise the stunning parallels. For here there is also a mime/clown and a murder involved. Even down to some stills the resemblance is overwhelming. Yet one more reason for me to be absolutely anxious to watch it. Though I have been informed that  I will have to be patient until late 2012.

Somebody that I used to know

OMG Twitter

Sometimes my beloved Christine's reaction "OMG", fits quite brilliantly into my life scheme. So again OMG, now I've joined Twitter and why? Because I'd love to tell the world or whomever that The Girl Is Mime seems to be a quite interesting short. Reasons why: I've always been fond of silent movies and aware of  - I believe it was Lilian Gish's - assertion that silent movie acting was no mime. True, for people in silent movies behave and talk mostly naturally - unless there is slapstick going on - you just cannot hear them. Now I've watched regretfully only the trailer(s) and the making of of a movie that takes a mime as its protagonist, and as a consequence is a silent movie. It should unsettle me but instead it feels like a marvellous idea, because from all the looks of it, mime is presented as mime and yet the central protagonist's emotions are - from the alas to me limited look of it - wonderfully enacted. To me the best actors were always those - mainly trained in silent movies - that could tell you one thing in words and something completely different with their facial expression and body language. I strongly believe that The Girl Is Mime manages to play on exactly this antithesis and this especially with the help of one of the finest British actors. ;)

A follow-up is located here http://das-unmoegliche.blogspot.com/2011/08/girl-is-mime-and-magic-flame.html!

Unvordenklich - Immemorial

Something that has always kept me busy about art is the fact that allows to create things genuinely or originally, to this extent that there are not representing any "reality" or a concept.
















The metaphor I usually employ is that of a journey I'm setting out for, and being the adventurous type I'd rather leave on one whose outcome  - and ideally outset - is not yet known to me, for what good is any movement that only keeps me confined to myself. A muslim once said straight to me - meeting me for the first and only time - that he perceives that I have a great trust in god, which is only another way to describe my yearnings.












So here are some drawings that actually started out with a line and ended thus - immemorial/ unvordenklich. - Fell madly in love with a couple of beautiful ears, dEUS, Morticia Chair