Art
August 26, 2009
- Every day, my breath catches at the incredible landscape surrounding our new home near Prague. Shafts of low light sweep across a vast field. The morning sun skims across the lingering haze from the valley below, where spires and buildings and the Castle rise up out of the morning mist. Some mornings, the view has been rose-tinted with the waking sun. Others, the crescent moon hangs like a ...
- Continue Reading » 0 Comments
August 25, 2009
- I spent most of today at the Musées royaux d'art et d'histoire in Brussels, looking at more than five hundred Japanese woodblock prints by Kitagawa Utamaro. The museum houses approximately 6,550 Ukiyo-e prints and an additional one thousand book illustrations by various artists, including some remarkable Harunobu designs that have retained their glorious colours. I would have liked to see every ...
- Continue Reading » 0 Comments
August 22, 2009
- Just the image...apologies - you need the link...and it's by Caravaggio... http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b0/Takingofchrist.jpg
- Continue Reading » 0 Comments
August 22, 2009
- I am not sure I’d like to have a little chat with Mona Lisa or want her to wave out to me like some movie star. This is not about purity in art but about purity in ways of seeing. Rather than humanising, it becomes robotic. Beijing’s Alive Gallery is doing just that. It has got a whole series of famous art works that move and talk. The Mona Lisa, for example, answers questions. In a video ...
- Continue Reading » 2 Comments
August 22, 2009
- Eileen “I think one of the reasons for practicing arts is to extend oneself beyond oneself (not that I have been successful at doing so).” Absolutely. Since art is creation, and artists are the creators, it’s a little like playing God, except on a tiny and very humble scale, and only in their imaginations (and ours) of course. They make scenes that live. They make people. Everything ...
- Continue Reading » 0 Comments
August 20, 2009
- Eileen “I agree. Does an actor portray his real life – not usually. If we are to believe he does, I think that is childish.” Acting is a terrific analogy. A good writer, just like a good actor, tries to “get inside” the characters he or she is hoping to portray. When I write a poem and can say “I” instead of “he” or “she,” I find getting inside the fictional person in the ...
- Continue Reading » 2 Comments
August 19, 2009
- Something about two articles caught my attention about art, design, photography and process. The first, “Familiarity Breeds Contempt” appears on the blog Rap Sheet, by J. Kingston Pierce, and presents numerous book jackets that use the same stock photo. Granted, most of these copycat covers are for crime novels, but there's also an adaptation of the same image on James Patterson’s detective ...
- Continue Reading » 1 Comment
August 19, 2009
- As my recent posts would suggest, I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s o.k. to write poetry in the first person about experiences one hasn’t had, even knowing that such poems defy convention and that one’s audience might mistakenly believe such verse to be autobiographical. I think such defiance is justfied when: 1) it serves some greater truth, and 2) the author knows enough about ...
- Continue Reading » 1 Comment
August 18, 2009
- E. J. Barnes “It’s easier to get away with fiction in poetry if it’s clearly science-fiction, fantasy, or set in a historic period. I’m reminded of a story published some years ago called “The Man Who Planted Trees”. It got turned into a half-hour “short” animated film. It was just such a beautiful, hopeful story that many viewers of the film (including myself), as well as ...
- Continue Reading » 0 Comments
August 17, 2009
- E. J. Barnes “You have done nothing more than run afoul of one of the conventions of the form in which you choose to tell your stories. Yet “‘Cuda” would not nearly be so affecting as a short story, let alone a film.” Thanks for your remarks. You’re right: it is all about convention, and one peculiar to poetry. But it’s one I wrestle with quite a bit, hence the topic on ...
- Continue Reading » 0 Comments
