Travel

"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness,"

(Mark Twain)

Chanson d'automne (Paul Verlaine)

Les sanglots longs
Des violons
De l'automne
Blessent mon coeur
D'une langueur
Monotone.

Tout suffocant
Et blême, quand
Sonne l'heure,
Je me souviens
Des jours anciens
Et je pleure;

Et je m'en vais
Au vent mauvais
Qui m'emporte
Deçà, delà
Pareil à la
Feuille morte.


Paul Verlaine (1844-1896)

At the Window (Paul Eluard)

" I have not always had this certainty, this pessimism which reassures the best among us. There was a time when my friends laughed at me. I was not the master of my words. A certain indifference, I have not always known well what I wanted to say, but most often it was because I had nothing to say. The necessity of speaking and the desire not to be heard. My life hanging only by a thread.

There was a time when I seemed to understand nothing. My chains floated on the water.

All my desires are born of my dreams. And I have proven my love with words. To what fantastic creatures have I entrusted myself, in what dolorous and ravishing world has my imagination enclosed me? I am sure of having been loved in the most mysterious of domains, my own. The language of my love does not belong to human language, my human body does not touch the flesh of my love. My amorous imagination has always been constant and high enough so that nothing could attempt to convince me of error. " (Paul Eluard)

Anger

"You can have anger toward people or you can have freedom from people, but you can't have both."

(Vernon Howard)

John Singer Sargent

Interesting fact: Sargent never stopped making portraits; instead of time-consuming oil paintings he came to prefer charcoal drawings that could be produced in a single sitting about 2 hours in length. From 1910 to his death in 1925 he made over 500 such drawings, while painting fewer than 30 oil portraits.(From a book "Sargent portrait drawings. 42 works by John Singer Sargent")

The above drawing Sargent made at the age of 16.

Portrait of Horace Webber.

Tamara Karsavina in the Title Role of "Thamar".

Acquainted With the Night

I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain - and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.
I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say good-bye;
And further still at an unearthly height,
One luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.



(Robert Frost)

Breakfast (Jacques Prévert)

He poured the coffee
Into the cup
He poured the milk
Into the cup of coffee
He added the sugar
To the coffee and milk
He stirred it
With a teaspoon
He drank the coffee
And put back the cup
Without speaking to me
He lit a cigarette
He blew some rings
With the smoke
He flicked the ashes
Into the ashtray
Without speaking to me
Without looking at me
He got up
He put his hat
On his head
He put on
His raincoat
Because it was raining
He went out
Into the rain
Without a word
Without looking at me
And I
I took my head
In my hands
And I wept

Hypocracy...

"Hypocracy is the tribute vice pays to virtue" (François, Duc de La Rochefoucauld)

What the heart knows ...

"What the heart knows today the head will understand tomorrow,"
wrote Irish storyteller James Stephens.... it will be lucky if you're smart enough to trust your heart, which has already figured out a certain truth that your head is still days away from registering. This is not merely a pretty metaphor, by the way. Despite what you may have been led to believe about the nature of the heart, it is actually an organ of intelligence that is capable of deep thought.

(from Rob Brezhnev's Free Will Astrology)

Joseph Cornell. Master of Dreams.Part 2.

Cornell could create poetry from the commonplace. This box is called 'Toward the Blue Peninsula'. Isn't it breathtaking...?



In 1940s Cornell created the Medici series, the most 'haunting' of all his works.

This box is called 'Medici Slot Machine'.



This is 'Medici Princess'.



This is 'Medici Boy'.

Joseph Cornell. Master of Dreams.Part 1.

I've been fascinated by Joseph Cornell's boxes for quite time, but never had a chance to read a good book on his life. The book I borrowed from the public library turned out to be an exceptional one: I will, definitely read it again some time....

Cornell, Joseph (1903-72), an American sculptor, one of the pioneers of assemblage, had no formal training in art . They say in his 'boxes' he combined 'the formal austerity of Constructivism with the lively fantasy of Surrealism'.

The Surrealists believed that the function of the poet or artist was to communicate the primary concept, not by describing it but selecting the appropriate word or image as symbol, which would act as stimulus or irritant to the senses of the spectator. This in turn would arouse multiple images and emotions to the senses of the spectator... like this one.

...or this one

Martin Buber quotation

"All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware."

(philosopher Martin Buber)

Nietzsche about Art

"We have art so that we may not die of reality"

Friedrich Nietzsche

Picasso about his art

From the moment that art ceases to be food that feeds the best minds, the artist can use his talents to perform all the tricks of the intellectual charlatan. Most people can today no longer expect to receive consolation and exaltation from art. "The 'refined,' the rich, the professional 'do-nothings', the distillers of quintessence desire only the peculiar, the sensational, the eccentric, the scandalous in today's art. I myself, since the advent of Cubism, have fed these fellows what they wanted and satisfied these critics with all the ridiculous ideas that have passed through my mind. "The less they understood them, the more they admired me. Through amusing myself with all these absurd farces, I became celebrated, and very rapidly. For a painter, celebrity means sales and consequent affluence. Today, as you know, I am celebrated, I am rich. "But when I am alone, I do not have the effrontery to consider myself an artist at all, not in the grand old meaning of the word: Giotto, Titian, Rembrandt, Goya were great painters. I am only a public clown--a mountebank. "I have understood my time and have exploited the imbecility, the vanity, the greed of my contemporaries. It is a bitter confession, this confession of mine, more painful than it may seem. But at least and at last it does have the merit of being honest.

- Pablo Picasso - 1952

Belief and intelligence

"Belief is the end of intelligence," says philosopher Robert Anton Wilson. The moment you become attached to an opinion or theory, no matter how good or true or beautiful it might seem, you're no longer fully open to the mysteries that life brings you. Your perceptiveness wanes and your understanding shrinks. A wave of raw truth is headed your way, and yet you will miss it completely unless you take a vacation from your beliefs about the way the world works.

The secret of life

"The secret of life," said sculptor Henry Moore to poet Donald Hall, "is to have a task, something you devote your entire life to, something you bring everything to, every minute of the day for your whole life. And the most important thing is—it must be something you cannot possibly do."

What is that task for you?

One's reading...

We know by one's reading
His learning and breeding;
By what draws his laughter
We know his Hereafter.
Read nothing, laugh never --
The Sphinx was less clever!


Jupiter Muke