Tokyo Nobody (2000) – Masataka Nakano
Masataka Nakano is a Japanese photographer, best-known for his Tokyo Nobody anthology, a series of photos of Tokyo, devoid of its 10 to 15 million inhabitants; mostly shot on the New Year holiday when all city dwellers go to visit relatives out in the country and Tokyo becomes a ghost town.
Via Trevor Brown (1).
See also: abandonment
[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4wyQCD70sQ&]
Truman Capote/Andy Warhol with the Rolling Stones
Yesterday evening, after visiting friends who provided me with a Joe Sarnoesque [1] experience of suburban want and need in the Antwerp district of the Tentoonstellingslaan, I finished my viewing of Capote, which sheds light on the nature of fiction and modern writing. The key to the film is in its final five minutes where Truman Capote contends that there was nothing he could have done to save the life of the murderers, but as Nelle (Christine Keener, who I recently admired in Friends with Money, a portrayal of American depression) responds, he did not want to do that. Implied is that he did not want to save the murderers for the sake of his book In Cold Blood and in fact, put his own life to a perverted use subjugated to the pursuit of writing fiction. (see semi-autobiographical and autofiction.)
[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5Pb9nykjQA]
Les Statues meurent aussi (Eng: Statues also Die) is a short subject documentary film by Chris Marker and Alain Resnais released in 1953 and financed by the anticolonial organisation Présence africaine. Its theme was that Western civilization is responsible for the decline of black art due to cultural appropriation. The film was seen at the Cannes Film Festival, it won the Prix Jean Vigo in 1954 but was banned shortly afterwards for more than 10 years by the French censor.
Collapse IV (2008)
Order it here.
This looks interesting. Nice cover too. A bit arcimboldesque. I wonder who did it. This is the cover of a contemporary philosophy magazine of which this issue is dedicated to the theory of horror. Any philosophy of horror and the representation thereof (which is also the theory of the aestheticization of violence) needs to start with Aristotle, as I’ve stated before. Aristotle said on the subject:
“Objects which in themselves we view with pain, we delight to contemplate when reproduced with minute fidelity: such as the forms of the most ignoble animals and of dead bodies.” —Aristotle from the Poetics.
As you may have guessed by now, I have limited first-hand knowledge on some subjects; I do not have the patience to read Aristotle. Nevertheless, in my infinite ignorance, I dare to state that I like Aristotle and dislike Plato. Plato strikes me as a bore (much like Kant does), Aristotle was a sensationalist like myself. From “my” page on aestheticization of violence, Plato comes across as the sort of moral crusader I’ve never felt any sympathy for (except that they have sometimes pointed me in the direction of worthwhile art, see the censor/censored dilemma):
Plato proposed to ban poets from his ideal republic because he feared that their aesthetic ability to construct attractive narratives about immoral behavior would corrupt young minds. Plato’s writings refer to poetry as a kind of rhetoric, whose “…influence is pervasive and often harmful.” Plato believed that poetry that was “unregulated by philosophy is a danger to soul and community.” He warned that tragic poetry can produce “a disordered psychic regime or constitution” by inducing “a dream-like, uncritical state in which we lose ourselves in …sorrow, grief, anger, [and] resentment.
Back to contemporary philosophy. From Wikpedia:
“Philosophy has re-entered popular culture through the work of authors such as Alain de Botton. This trend is reinforced by the recent increase in films with philosophical content. Some films, such as Fight Club, eXistenZ, The Matrix trilogy, Little Miss Sunshine, and Waking Life have philosophical themes underpinning their overarching plots. Other films attempt to be overtly philosophical, such as I ♥ Huckabees.”
I’ve done Fight Club, eXistenZ, The Matrix and Little Miss Sunshine and of those three I like eXistenZ best. I will want to see Waking Life and I ♥ Huckabees. Where do I start. Huckabees? It stars Huppert. And from what I’ve Youtubed of Waking, it reminded me of Scanner Darkly, with which I was not too impressed (but has lingered on afterwards). Any thoughts, dear readers?
Update 17/4: More on Collapse. Collapse has links with New Weird and Speculative realism. The cover is probably by the Chapmans (“new etchings from Jake Chapman“). Of all its contributions I am most curious about Graham Harman on the unnatural bond between Husserl and Lovecraft and Iain Hamilton Grant on Lorenz Oken‘s naturphilosophische slime-horror.
Photo by Francesca Woodman, see more at the Google gallery
Just like the director Belvaux in the previous post, this talented photographer took her life, only much younger, she was only 22, and left behind a mere 500 photographs. Sometimes it feels like one could build an entire art history class around artists who’ve committed suicide.
American art critic David Levi Strauss wrote an essay about her; “After You, Dearest Photography: Reflections on the Work of Francesca Woodman,” which takes its title from “After you, dearest language” by André Breton’s in Introduction au discours sur le peu de realité.
Breton’s full quote reads: “Quietly. I want to pass where no one yet has passed, quietly! — After you, dearest language.”
That is exceedingly well said, mister Breton.
Night over Jerusalem (1980s) by Yaacov Agam
It only rarely happens that a living artist releases work into the public domain. Yet it is precisely what happened to the work displayed above. Agam is an Israeli artist born in 1928, known for his kinetic art pieces.
This work brings up visions of Tati’s Playtime.
Tip of the hat to A Dictionary of the Avant-Gardes, which arrived in the mail this morning and the artists of which I am adding to my wiki. Lots of “concrete poetry” and “sound art” artists in this book.
I’m normally not very much into the rectangular modern art stuff, but this is a very “warm” piece, what do you think?
[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHlKT8y8RQM&]
Remote Control
[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1m-U11KTDEs&]
Pryings
Kathy Dillon participated in Vito Acconci‘s body art pieces when she was his girlfriend in the early 1970s.
“Remote Control” has Acconci remote controlling Dillon by voice, including having herself tied up, as depicted.
“Pryings” is Dillon trying to keep here eyes closed while Acconci is trying to pry them open.
Pop Surrealism: The Rise Of Underground Art (2004)
American Kirsten Anderson, founder of Roq La Rue Gallery, and co-founder of BLVD Gallery, editor of the book Pop Surrealism (depicted above) has been blogging for a while at Right Some Good. She notes that “This blog is mainly to showcase art that I’m currently enamoured with,” which includes posts on Caspar David Friedrich, Gustave Moreau, Richard Dadd and Leon Bakst.
From her blogroll also these interesting blogs:
Tip of the hat to Paul Rumsey.
Poster for Pasolini’s Salo film
Cover by Avedon for French arts magazine Egoïste (very expensive second hand) , for sale at the excellent Arcana Books on the Arts
Extremely good album by Hugh Masekela (1984), check a poorly recorded Youtube rendition here.
Losfeld’s Arcanes catalog 1967
Cover for Eroscore, 1970s mag on erotic cinema
“First there is nothing, next there is depth of nothingness, then a profundity of blue”
I recently acquired the book above: “Art in Theory“. This is not a book you read from cover to cover, I am reading it the way I like reading most, by the index (and aided by Google book search). The introductory essays to each chapter are very good.
A copy from my first impressions posted on the Art and Pop wiki:
“One single text” by Bataille
Barthes in the From Work To Text on Georges Bataille:
This reminds me of Richard Simmillion, a recurring character in W. F. Hermans‘s novels and stories. Hermans is also an author who wrote one single text.
On Bachelard
“Facts long amassed, patiently juxtaposed, avariciously preserved, are suspect. they bear the stigma of prudence, of conformism, of constancy, of slowness,” writes Gaston Bachelard. –via ON INVENTING OUR OWN ART by Ibram Lassaw
Bachelard is also mentioned by Barthes in Mythologies.
Bachelard is also mentioned by Yves Klein in a Sorbonne lecture given in 1959.
These are some of the quotes which make this volume worthwhile. I recommend this book.
