Thessaly

"That writers “write” is meant to be self-evident. People like to say it. I find it is..."

Sun, 07 Apr 2013 14:09:30 -0400

“That writers “write” is meant to be self-evident. People like to say it. I find it is hardly ever true. Writers drink. Writers rant. Writers phone. Writers sleep. I have met very few writers who write at all.”

- Renata Adler (via Durga Polashi)

I’ve also been reading John Richardson’s magnificent...

Wed, 20 Mar 2013 23:33:00 -0400

I’ve also been reading John Richardson’s magnificent biography of Picasso for some research. Picasso, what a brute, what a charmer. Twice I’ve been asked why I’m so interested in the guy, and it’s true, I don’t think he is my favorite painter, but when I look at his work as a stream of images, I do feel like there are too many of his paintings that changed the way I thought of light, shape, and color when I first saw them… It saddens me to think that Richardson must be in very poor health, and that the fourth volume of the biography is forever forthcoming (I can only imagine the frustration, as the writer; Richardson was surely saving some of the best for last), especially because Francoise Gilot (above) is a fascinating woman, and she always seemed the strongest, maybe also a bit like Picasso’s first great mistress Fernande Olivier. But I always looked at Gilot and thought that she knew exactly what she was getting into… Or at least that’s how I imagine her to be.

(P.S. This has a very similar composition to a #selfie, don’t you say?)

I’m obsessed with Misia Sert. Muse, hostess, gifted...

Wed, 20 Mar 2013 21:17:00 -0400

I’m obsessed with Misia Sert. Muse, hostess, gifted pianist, painted by Toulouse-Lautrec, Renoir, friend of Verlaine, Rilke, Proust, best friends with Chanel, Diaghilev’s soul mate, the list goes on and on. Clive James says in his excellent essay about her biography:

Misia was in the thick of it, stirring the magic, helping make life itself a work of art — something artists are usually too busy to do.

She also shot Morphine straight through her clothes (ummm) and first heard “The Rite of Spring” in her living room, no big deal. She also never bothered to open some of Proust’s letters (WHAT). James also writes:

Misia survives only in the work of others. … But the personality itself has been long gone. In a way that no artist can ever quite understand but nearly all of them find irresistibly attractive, she did nothing with her capacity for beauty except live. Yet the human personality, which dies with the memory of individuals, and the work of art, which lives on in the collective consciousness, are different forms of the same thing — a truth made acutely visible by Misia’s portraits, which, if they do not capture her, certainly capture uncapturability. She gave the artists the gift of her sublime ephemerality and they made it last. That true sacred monster the Comtesse Anna de Noailles wrote herself an epitaph which would have done much better for Misia: ‘I shall have been useless but irreplaceable.’

Nina Katchadourian.

Wed, 13 Mar 2013 19:04:43 -0400

Nina Katchadourian.

"You have to have a certain detachment in order to see beauty for yourself rather than something that..."

Wed, 13 Mar 2013 17:47:01 -0400

“You have to have a certain detachment in order to see beauty for yourself rather than something that has been put in quotation marks to be understood as “beauty.” Think about Dutch painting, where sunlight is falling on a basin of water and a woman is standing there in the clothes that she would wear when she wakes up in the morning—that beauty is a casual glimpse of something very ordinary. Or a painting like Rembrandt’s Carcass of Beef, where a simple piece of meat caught his eye because there was something mysterious about it. You also get that in Edward Hopper: Look at the sunlight! or Look at the human being! These are instances of genius. Cultures cherish artists because they are people who can say, Look at that. And it’s not Versailles. It’s a brick wall with a ray of sunlight falling on it.”

- Marilynne Robinson.

I read the first page of my short story “Mollino, Mollino,...

Wed, 13 Mar 2013 17:17:00 -0400

I read the first page of my short story “Mollino, Mollino, Mollino” for Henry Review. This illustration is by the talented Canyon Castator. There’s a bit of a Q&A, too:

Is design an organizing principle of your collection, The Muse? Are the stories in thematic conversation, and in direct conversation as well?

I love design. But I love it as an aficionado. An amateur. And I’m obsessed with aesthetics. And the way in which art making is in dialogue with aesthetics. So my collection is circling around those themes. I have one story about an artist’s muse. Another about a quartet. Another about two painters. Another about a model. Another about a critic. I think they all speak to each other, but they are also simply stories about people, you know? I’m hesitant about declaring one’s own themes as a writer. Sometimes I believe your work is merely a chronological and distorted reflection of you. And you’re lucky if something else emerges from that.

Isadora Duncan. On somedays one wants to be from another...

Wed, 13 Mar 2013 17:14:33 -0400

Isadora Duncan. On somedays one wants to be from another era…

Photo

Tue, 05 Mar 2013 16:58:29 -0500

"So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years […] Trying to learn to use words, and..."

Tue, 05 Mar 2013 16:57:06 -0500

“So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years […]
Trying to learn to use words, and every attempt
Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure
Because one had only learnt to get the better of words
For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which
One is no longer disposed to say it.”

- T. S. Eliot

Mini me. #tbt

Thu, 28 Feb 2013 10:30:35 -0500

Mini me. #tbt

This seems important. Feels a bit like looking at different...

Wed, 27 Feb 2013 22:09:00 -0500

This seems important.

Feels a bit like looking at different bodies!

Aubergine-shaped jade snuff bottles, Qing Dynasty, 18th Century....

Thu, 21 Feb 2013 02:27:28 -0500

Aubergine-shaped jade snuff bottles, Qing Dynasty, 18th Century. 🍆🍐 (at 國立故宮博物院 National Palace Museum)

How to create the impression of grandeur? Make your guests walk...

Wed, 20 Feb 2013 23:54:46 -0500

How to create the impression of grandeur? Make your guests walk for a very long time before they reach the entrance. (at 國立故宮博物院 National Palace Museum)

The roof of Longshan Temple, carved with fiery dragons, first...

Wed, 20 Feb 2013 05:23:49 -0500

The roof of Longshan Temple, carved with fiery dragons, first built in 1738 (!) and rebuilt several times after fire, earthquake, and war. 🐲 (at 艋舺龍山寺 Longshan Temple)

Good morning Taipei! (at 通化街臨江夜市 Tonghua Night Market)

Mon, 18 Feb 2013 21:41:22 -0500

Good morning Taipei! (at 通化街臨江夜市 Tonghua Night Market)

My grandfather in La Dépêche, Le Journal de Tahiti, Sept. 17,...

Sun, 17 Feb 2013 15:27:41 -0500

My grandfather in La Dépêche, Le Journal de Tahiti, Sept. 17, 1982.

Guy Bourdin, Polaroid, c. 1980 (via Mondo Blogo)

Tue, 05 Feb 2013 12:55:07 -0500

Guy Bourdin, Polaroid, c. 1980 (via Mondo Blogo)

A young Kathryn Bigelow. I went into Zero Dark Thirty apathetic,...

Thu, 24 Jan 2013 15:30:00 -0500

A young Kathryn Bigelow. I went into Zero Dark Thirty apathetic, left completely charged. There are very legitimate reasons to make noise about the depiction of torture in her film (as David Denby put it, “Bigelow and Boal—the team behind “The Hurt Locker”—want to claim the authority of fact and the freedom of fiction at the same time, and the contradiction mars an ambitious project”), but that aside, her career and her trajectory are utterly fascinating. And covetable. I like the idea of an evolving intellect and creative mind, of moving from one medium to another, and seeing how they are different and why the weaknesses of one are the strengths of another. I guess I identify with it. I wasn’t born like this. Who I am, and what I do is not a mark of precocity, but of discovery. I mean, her experience is unique, it doesn’t make sense but without it, I feel we have evidence to suppose she wouldn’t have made movies the way she does now—from conceptual art to her marriage to James Cameron to an Oscar …

I guess you have to buy the issue of Time to get the cover story, but here’s a Q&A that they’ve posted online.

Dorothy Parker telegrams her editor because she can’t face...

Sun, 20 Jan 2013 13:02:00 -0500

Dorothy Parker telegrams her editor because she can’t face him on the phone!

Maud Wagner, the first known female tattooist in the U.S., 1911....

Sat, 19 Jan 2013 12:40:00 -0500

Maud Wagner, the first known female tattooist in the U.S., 1911. In 1907, she traded a date with her husband-to-be for tattoo lessons. Their daughter, Lotteva Wagner, was also a tattooist. Must be in the blood.

(From “Bodies of Subversion: A Secret History of Women and Tattoo,” via The New Yorker.)