Constructing Art

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackson_Pollock



Subject is interesting, but film is so and so. E.H needs more time to make a film maybe.

http://www.edvard-munch.com/

http://andrey-rublev.ru/

Interesting comment. Klimt is 3 stars. the rest is half.

Escritor cubano nacido cerca de Holguín (Aguas Claras), donde creció comiendo tierra junto a su abandonada madre y su abuela que orinaba de pie. Empezó a escribir a los 13 años, aunque la llegada de la Revolución, a la que se sumó como guerrillero, retrasó su vocación hasta 1963, cuando ingresó en la Biblioteca Nacional y redactó Celestino antes del alba. Conoció y entabló amistad con Piñera y Lezama Lima. Su libro El mundo alucinante fue prohibido por contrarrevolucionario, y a partir de ese momento y en adelante tuvo que esconder sus manuscritos. Otra vez el mar, que ocultó bajo tierra y en el tejado, fue hallado y destruido, pero lo rehizo tres veces. El ambiente en Cuba se enrarecía: la campaña de la Zafra de los Diez Millones, en la que el escritor fue obligado a contribuir cortando caña en una plantación, y las torturas al poeta disidente Heberto Padilla fueron para Arenas síntomas de su arriesgada situación, que trató de paliar al casarse con la actriz Ingrávida González. En 1973 lo detuvieron por contrarrevolucionario y traicionado en su huida por su amigo Coco Salá, fue conducido al cuartel de Miramar, desde donde trató de salir de la isla en un neumático. Fracasó, como cuando quiso huir por Guantánamo, donde estuvo a punto de ser ametrallado. Durante dos meses se refugió entre la vegetación del Parque Lenin, hasta que la policía lo encerró en el castillo del Morro: dos años entre palizas e intentos de suicidio. Tras perder dos dientes, trabajar como forzado y confesar por escrito para evitar torturas, obtuvo la libertad. En los cinco años siguientes asistió a las muertes de sus amigos Lezama Lima y Piñera, se enamoró del joven Lázaro Gómez y saqueó un convento para sobrevivir. Hasta que se unió a los marielitos y falsificó a mano su pasaporte para convertirse en Reinaldo Arinas y eludir la lista de los que no podían salir del país. En 1980 consiguió huir de Cuba y se trasladó a Miami. Muchos intelectuales le dieron la espalda, y aprendió que un exiliado sin dinero no era nadie. Arenas paseó 10 años su grito por Venezuela, Francia, Portugal, Suecia, Dinamarca y España. En Estados Unidos, donde colaboró en la revista Mariel desde su fundación en 1983 hasta su cierre en 1987, acabó el repaso a su vida que había iniciado 17 años antes en el Parque Lenin. Reynaldo Arenas se suicidó el 7 de diciembre de 1990.

Born July 6, 1907 in the town of Coyoacán in Mexico, Frida Kahlo survived many difficult events in her life, including contracting polio as a child, a long recovery from a serious car accident, two failed marriages, and several miscarriages.



She used these experiences, combined with strong Mexican and Native American cultural influences, to create highly personal paintings. Kahlo used personal symbolism mixed with Surrealism to express her suffering through her work. A viewer might classify her paintings as Surrealism or Magic Realism, but she considered her art to be realistic.



Kahlo died July 13, 1954 of pulmonary embolism.

I prefer her to Rodin.

Jean-Michel Basquiat (December 22, 1960 ? August 12, 1988) was an American artist and the first African-American painter to gain international fame.[1] He gained popularity first as a graffiti artist in New York City, and then as a successful 1980s-era Neo-expressionist artist. Basquiat's paintings continue to influence modern-day artists and command high prices.

http://caravaggio.com/preview/home.html

Francis Bacon (28 October 1909 ? 28 April 1992) was an Irish-born British figurative painter. His artwork is known for its bold, austere, homoerotic and often violent or nightmarish imagery, which typically shows room-bound masculine figures isolated in glass or steel geometrical cages set against flat, nondescript backgrounds. Bacon had begun painting by his early 20s, yet he worked only sporadically and without commitment during the late 1920s and early 1930s, when he worked as an interior decorator and designer of furniture and rugs. He later admitted that his career was delayed because he had spent so long looking for a subject that would sustain his interest.[1] His breakthrough came with the 1944 triptych Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion, and it was this work and his heads and figures of the late 1940s through to the early 1960s that sealed his reputation as a notably bleak, world famous, chronicler of the human condition.

Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni[1] (March 6, 1475 ? February 18, 1564), commonly known as Michelangelo, was an Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, architect, poet, and engineer. Despite making few forays beyond the arts, his versatility in the disciplines he took up was of such a high order that he is often considered a contender for the title of the archetypal Renaissance man, along with his rival and fellow Italian Leonardo da Vinci.

Filmmaker Hiroshi Teshigahara?s visual love affair with the fantastic architecture of Antonio Gaudi (1852-1926) is a film not to be merely watched but to be experienced. The virtually wordless soundtrack of Antonio Gaudi allows the viewer to be submerged in the slow-moving camera work of cinematographers Junichi Segawa, Ryu Segawa and Yoshikazu Yanagida. The compelling cinematography captures what no book possibly could-- a sense of the space and movement in Gaudi?s structures. Even a personal tour of these buildings could not provide the close-up examination of surface and texture juxtaposed with sweeping vistas of Barcelona and birds-eye views of the architect?s impact upon the city.

Antonio Gaudi sought to create an architecture that complimented and reflected natural forms. He once noted that ?God?s architecture? contains no straight lines. This organic quality is emphasized by the movement of the camera around and through the architecture. As the film opens, the viewer is exposed to the architecture of several of Gaudi's contemporaries in late 19th century Catalan. The blinking eye of the camera lights upon the flat façade of the Casa Amatller by Josep Puig y Cadafalch before giving way to a fluid pan over the almost human shapes of Gaudi's Casa Batllo. The anthropomorphic curves of the building's foyer are further emphasized by the cinematographer's attention to the spine-like edge of the stairwell. Absorbed in the quiet appreciation of a smoothly molded ceiling, the viewer finds the sudden appearance of people occupying the room below disconcerting and almost rude.

Equally startling is the sound of a conversation between a student and Professor Juan Bassegoda Nonell, a noted Gaudi scholar. The moment is one of only a few in which human voices intrude upon the mesmerizing score by film composer Toru Takemitsu. The complete lack of narration and the minimal subtitles force the viewer to consider the architecture for what it is without the usual stream of labels and comparisons. The filmmaker?s acute sensual appreciation for the tiniest details is reflected in the meditative quality of the musical score. At other times the ethereal, almost spooky music seems at odds with such profoundly earthy forms as Gaudi?s grottos at the Parque Guell.

Gaudi?s master work, the Sagrada Familia is the final structure explored in the film. The complexity of Gaudi?s plan for this structure has been a slowly unfolding puzzle to architects who have carried on his work since his untimely death in 1926. This segment of the film is the only portion to have any narration which comes in the form of a commentary by Puig Boada, Gaudi?s assistant in the construction of the temple. Boada explains that the model for the temple was destroyed in the Spanish Civil War, and many architects have since been involved in researching and recreating the plan for this ultimate expression of Gaudi?s artistic genius. The temple was still incomplete on the recent 150th anniversary of Antonio Gaudi?s birth. Boada tells the viewer that Gaudi wanted architecture to be in the image of nature, and this film is a wonderful testament to his effort and achievement.

Because this film is primarily a visual experience of Gaudi?s architecture, the viewer may wish to consult George Roseborough Collins? short but important work Antonio Gaud, George Braziller, 1960. Several more recent publications include Rainer Zerbst?s Gaudi, 1852-1926: Antoni Gaudi i Cornet: a life devoted to architecture, Taschen, 1991, and Antonio Gaudi: Master Architect by Juan Bassegoda Nonell, Abbeville Press, 2000. A compliment to the visual feast of the film can be found in The Designs and Drawings of Antonio Gaudi, by an unbeatable partnership of two notable Gaudi scholars: Juan Bassegoda Nonell and George Roseborough Collins, Princeton University Press, 1983. Most of Gaudi?s drawings were destroyed by the same Civil War fire that destroyed the model of Sagrada Familia, so those that survive provide a valuable insight to the intellect of the architect. The architect?s complex spatial engineering illustrated in The Designs and Drawings of Antonio Gaudi is an excellent compliment to the sensual celebration that is Teshigahara?s Antonio Gaudi.

Surreal subject and outstanding performance by Nicole Kidman-2006.

"Fur" is a folly, though not a dishonorable one. It was directed by Steven Shainberg, whose last feature, ?Secretary,? was a tender love story about a shy masochist and the boss who spanks his way into her heart. ?Fur? is a more ambitious work, in part because of Nicole Kidman, whose talent cannot obscure that she has been grievously miscast and left to indulge her mannered coyness. In ?Fur,? Mr. Shainberg?s screenwriter, Erin Cressida Wilson, who also wrote ?Secretary,? twists the classic Freudian concept of sexual fetishism, having apparently decided that the best way to explain Diane Arbus?s singular perspective on the world is to transform her into a fetishist. Thus, in this formulation, Lionel, her fuzzy neighbor, becomes a kind of walking, talking fetish, a means that will usher her into a new realm. This sounds more promising than what materializes on screen largely because Mr. Shainberg and Ms. Wilson have turned Arbus?s life into a neurotic fairy tale. ?

M.Forman's the weekest work I have ever seen. Sharp falldown.

the painter protagonist of Joyce Cary's novel The Horse's Mouth, had a prototype in real life:

This enlightening, well-made documentary from acclaimed filmmaker Michael Gaumnitz tells the story of groundbreaking artist Paul Klee, whose more than 9,000 paintings helped change the way the art world viewed color and composition, using some of his own illuminating writings.

Parajenov's best.

Verlaine returned to Paris in August 1871, and, in September, he received the first letter from Arthur Rimbaud. By 1872, he had lost interest in Mathilde, and effectively abandoned her and their son, preferring the company of his new lover.[2] Rimbaud and Verlaine's stormy affair took them to London in 1872. In July 1873 in a drunken, jealous rage, he fired two shots with a pistol at Rimbaud, wounding his left wrist, though not seriously injuring the poet. As an indirect result of this incident, Verlaine was arrested and imprisoned at Mons, where he underwent a conversion to Roman Catholicism, which again influenced his work and provoked Rimbaud's sharp criticism.

The poems collected in Romances sans paroles (1874) were written between 1872 and 1873, inspired by Verlaine's nostalgically colored recollections of his life with Mathilde on the one hand and impressionistic sketches of his on-again off-again year-long escapade with Rimbaud on the other. Romances sans paroles was published while Verlaine was imprisoned. Following his release from prison, Verlaine again traveled to England, where he worked for some years as a teacher and produced another successful collection, Sagesse. He returned to France in 1877 and, while teaching English at a school in Rethel, fell in love with one of his pupils, Lucien Létinois and who inspired Verlaine to write further poems. Verlaine was devastated when Létinois died of typhus in 1883.

62nd Cannes Film Festival

Romance & Desire

In The Portrait of a Lady, several critics disliked the opening credit sequence, or 'prologue', of contemporary teenage Australian girls discussing the thrill of their first kiss and their romantic aspirations for future relationships. (29) Their open and frank tone was considered to be at odds with Isabel's repressed desire, and the 20th century setting unsettled purist fans of the period film. (30) But this opening preface is in fact the key to Campion's interpretation of James' novel; it illuminates her own fascination with Isabel's journey from stubborn independence, to entrapment, through to self-awareness. The girls' voice-overs narrate instances of feminine desire: the ?exquisite? moment before a kiss as a head comes towards you, the excitement of another body in contact with your own, the ?mirror? that is to be found in a lifelong partner. Early in the film, Campion visualises Isabel's sexual desires in a fantasy sequence, (31) when Isabel imagines her three suitors lying in bed with her, kissing and caressing her face and body, or looking on with desire. Campion is explicit about Isabel's desire for this physical contact. Hence, the significance of her first 'real-life' kiss that we see ? as opposed to her fantasies ? when Osmond declares his love for her in the shadowy depths of the catacombs. Despite the marriage proposal of Lord Warburton and the persistence of her American suitor Caspar Goodwood, up to this point we have not witnessed a kiss between Isabel and these men. The combined effect of the fantasy sequence and the prologue's voicing of feminine desire is to invest Osmond's kiss with a life-changing force. Isabel's desire for Osmond's touch ? which remains present throughout even their most brutal confrontations ? is the catalyst for a startling reversal, in a woman who claimed she would ?probably never marry?. Whereas The Piano stages the liberation that comes from a woman's desires, The Portrait of a Lady reveals the dangers of that desire, the seduction that leads to entrapment in a loveless marriage. In this sense, it has been described as an ?anti-romance? and a reverse narrative of the erotic journey to fulfilment undertaken by Ada in The Piano. (32)

It is worth recalling Campion's sceptical and cautionary portrayal of romance in An Angel at my Table, when the romantic longings of Janet are stirred by the attentions of an American history professor, Bernard (William Brandt), holidaying in Ibiza. We witness Janet's discovery of her sexual desire and erotic self-expression, most openly when she swims naked before Bernard, shedding the shyness and self-consciousness we have come to associate with her. But no sooner has Janet glimpsed a new, more confident self through her first sexual relationship, when Bernard declares he is returning to America, dismissing their relationship as simply 'a holiday romance'. Janet is crushed, and the specifically female perils of sexual desire are demonstrated in her discovery that she is pregnant, followed by a traumatic miscarriage. The lesson learnt is that romance is risky, and that sex distracts Janet from her 'real' purpose, her writing. (33)

Campion's fascination with the darker side of romance is demonstrated by her declared passion for the Gothic literature of the Brontës. (34) Her films suggest she is acutely aware of the risks of romance, the dangers of desire, (35) for women in patriarchal society: while Ada is successful in achieving romantic union with Baines (Harvey Keitel) in The Piano, it comes at significant cost ? the loss of a finger and two attempts at rape by her jealous husband. Indeed, we can assume Ada has already discovered the 'costs' of romance in raising Flora (Anna Paquin) without Flora's father.


PJ (Harvey Keitel) and Ruth (Kate Winslet)

In Campion's two contemporary films, Sweetie and Holy Smoke, the seductive pitfalls of romance give way to the considerably unromantic negotiations of sex. In Sweetie, Kay and Louis's (Tom Lycos) courtship may initially appear 'romantic' in its abandonment of logic to the forces of fate and destiny, but the film spends little time on their romance, preferring instead to chart the slow disintegration of their relationship into frigid frustration, typified by Louis's suggestion over pizza that they make appointments to have sex (needless to say, this approach is unsuccessful). (36) In Holy Smoke, sex becomes a bargaining chip between Ruth and PJ. Perceiving the weakness at the heart of his machismo, Ruth seduces PJ in an attempt to reverse the power structure implicit in her position as a cult follower in need of 'de-programming'. Their first sexual encounter is successful in arousing PJ's emotions, thereby rendering him vulnerable, while leaving Ruth unsatisfied by PJ's perfunctory love-making. In contrast, their second sexual encounter, with PJ on his knees underneath Ruth's skirt, suggests a weakening in Ruth's resolve, as the camera focuses on her ecstatic pleasure. This lowering of her defences through sexual satisfaction allows PJ to convince Ruth that she has been cruel, but instead of Ruth falling in love with PJ, she becomes disgusted at her own manipulations of him and she flees the hut. Now PJ assumes the feminised, pathetic position of delirious lover. (37) Campion is merciless in her depiction of a lovesick PJ, stumbling across the desert in a red dress and lipstick, finally collapsing and hallucinating images of Ruth as an Indian goddess. 'Romance' never looked so ridiculous, nor have its power relations been so cruelly exposed.

The themes of madness, ambiguity and desire are central to Campion's films. Her work has generated an extensive body of critical discussion, which is all the more remarkable when one considers she has released only five feature films to date. Campion is a director who inspired critical comment and analysis even before she made her first feature. (38) At the time of writing, Campion's current project is an adaptation of Susanna Moore's novel In The Cut (1995), due for US release in January 2003. Starring Meg Ryan and produced by Nicole Kidman, the film's plot deals with ?murder, sadism and sex?. (39) As a story that continues Campion's uncompromising exploration of female erotic empowerment and masochistic desire, (40) In The Cut may well again inspire debate and controversy.

My thanks to Dr Jeanette Hoorn and Alan Hopgood for their constructive comments on an earlier version of this article.

An outwardly fragile and introspective man named Simon (Stanislas Merhar) stands in a darkened room poring over an audioless film footage of a group of holiday revelers at a seaside resort in Normandy. Repeatedly cueing the film to the excerpt of a beautiful young woman, Ariane (Sylvie Testud) and a friend, Andrée (Olivia Bonamy) overlooking the beach, Simon attempts to decipher Ariane's passing comment, concluding that her inaudible articulation to an unseen, off-camera listener must have been "I really like you". The enigmatic and curiously alienated prologue provides an insightful, yet forbidding glimpse into the relationship between the reclusive Simon and his lover Ariane: an obsession that is also manifested in the image of Simon trailing behind the oblivious Ariane as she drives alone to a secluded residential hotel (in a slow, labyrinthine pursuit that pays homage to Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo). Relegated to a life indoors due to chronic allergies and the entrusted care of a frail, elderly grandmother (Françoise Bertin), Simon has brought the seemingly acquiescent Ariane into his suffocating, insular household where he has furnished an adjacent room for her so that he may summon her at his discretion (deriving profound intimacy from observing her sleep), and has made arrangements with Andrée, an accommodating and trustworthy mutual friend (and reliable spy), to accompany her on brief excursions into town to stave off boredom and restlessness. However, as Simon becomes increasingly suspicious of Ariane's time consuming personal activities and mystified by her complacent inscrutability, he embarks on a consuming and ultimately destructive quest to possess his elusive lover completely.

Perhaps the most Bressonian of Chantal Akerman's minimalist and dedramatized cinema (most notably, in the bookend structure and psychological deconstruction of A Gentle Woman), La Captive is an elegantly sinuous and provocative exploration of obsession, madness, and intimacy. Although inspired by Marcel Proust's La Prisonnière, the fifth volume of his epic masterwork In Search of Lost Time, Akerman distills the lush texturality and baroque elements of Proust to create a spare and essential portrait that nevertheless retains the thematic density and emotional ambiguity of the psychological novel. From the estranged opening sequence as Simon studies a celluloid image and speaks for a silent and physically absent Ariane, Akerman establishes the film's subjective point of view and implicit objectification of - and control over - a voiceless (or more appropriately, silenced) Ariane. Visually, Akerman further reflects Simon's literal projection of Ariane through disorienting images of converging and diverging shadows cast on anonymous streets and an unfinished alabaster sculpture at an empty museum that represents both idealized perfection and dimensional incompletion. Moreover, Simon's perception of Ariane's untenable opacity is subsequently illustrated through an oddly distanced, non-coital sexual encounter between Simon and an unconscious Ariane - her impenetrable thoughts occluded by sleep. By presenting psychological interiority through an overarching narrative circularity and incorporating visually austere and oppressively isolating landscapes, Akerman creates a haunting and irresolvable odyssey of possession, passion, disconnection, and myopia.

Excellent Proust comment.