Marquis de Sade @268

Today is Marquis de Sade‘s 268th birthday. Was he our first postmodernist? The man who showed us that words are not necessarily representations of reality. That one can construct limits of text only. The first modernist too: by transgressing all rules, showed us that there are rules. Above all the Marquis has proven a tough act to follow. One can divide modernity in pre- and post-Sadean. Anyone wishing to transgress (in words, not in deeds) has only one reference, the Marquis himself. The only possible answer to his antics are incorporating his sensibility without following his monomania.

David Locher writes[1] in “Postmodernism as Neo-Dada”

“At the heart of postmodernism lies the assumption that most of the things that we take for granted are, in fact, simply illusions. Reality is not reflected within text, only text is reflected within text. There is no Truth beyond the experience of the text, and meaning is created every time the text is experienced. An author does not place meaning in the text, and his/her interpretation of the text is no more valid than any other (Baudrillard 1981; 1988; Connor 1989; Lyotard 1984). In other words, meaning is arbitrary, relative, and subjective. Language is, in its own way, reality. What we refer to as reality is not knowable, and we live in the illusion that we are in touch with it. The age in which concepts have a relation to reality is over (Baudrillard and Debrix 1995). Knowledge is only validated when it is referred to by second-level discourse (Lyotard 1984).”

Introducing Colette Calascione

From various Flickr members.

illumination - colette calascione by the domestic minxLeda new - colette calascione by the domestic minxcat mask - colette calascione by the domestic minxpsyche at her bath - colette calascione by the domestic minxcolette calascione by rana12_mx

persephone colette calascione by the domestic minxboudoir - colette calascione by the domestic minxwhatisRoundlikeaMoonandfullofLove - Colette Calascione by the domestic minxsleeper - colette calascione by the domestic minx

Colette Calascione (born in 1971) is an American artist. She received a B.F.A. from the San Francisco Art Institute, California. Her work has been shown at St. Mary’s College, Moraga, California and the San Francisco Art Institute, as well as in many galleries, most notably in the San Francisco area.

Sometimes her work reeks just a bit too much of the lowbrow art movement on which I am not always too keen (exceptions such as Mark Ryden notwithstanding), but the work above is steeped in art history, yet feels fresh.

This painting (title: Persephone, 2002) constitutes Icon of Erotic Art number 26.

World music classic #43 and 44

 

“Make it Last Forever”

Donna McGhee is an American singer who released one album on Red Greg Records, produced and arranged by Greg Carmichael and Patrick Adams. The track from that album, “Make It Last Forever,” was covered by Loleatta Holloway.

Greg Carmichael (“Barely Breaking Even”) and Patrick Adams (“In the Bush” and “Keep on Jumpin’) produced at least 50 tracks which transcend disco as genre. They are in many ways the auteurs of disco, more so than Larry Levan, Walter Gibbons or Tom Moulton, who were primarily involved in post-production. The only one to rival Adams and Carmichael was Arthur Russell, but his story is altogether different.

One more by Patrick Adams (“My Baby’s Got E.S.P.” notice the similarity of Patrick Adams’s trademark: the string arrangements and slow beats).

“My Baby’s Got E.S.P.”

Your doctor will look into your mouth …

Lazarillo de Tormes (1808-12) by Francisco de Goya

Lazarillo de Tormes (1808–12) by Francisco de Goya

Your doctor will look into your mouth to see if your throat is red and your tonsils are swollen and covered with white or yellow spots. He or she will also look for small red spots on the roof of your mouth.

Are anyone of you familiar with Lazarillo de Tormes and able to tell me what this scene is about and why Goya decided to paint it? The painting, which I found today, has a strange attraction. It is as something forbidden is going on. The man looking into the mouth of the kid is not a physician, I gather.

Update: found the explanation of the painting. The man is a blind man and the guardian of Lazarillo, he suspects that the Lazarillo has stolen food and wants to inspect it. Lazarillo‘s can’t stand the feeling of the man’s nose stuck in his throat and throws up in his face.

If Hitler Had Been a Hippy

If Hitler Had Been a Hippy How Happy we Would Be[1][2] is a 2008 series of paintings by Jake and Dinos Chapman which deface orginal paintings by Adolf Hitler. The Chapmans previously used a similar ploy on work by Goya (Insult to Injury).

At the end of May 2008 the White Cube Gallery exhibited the 20 authenticated watercolours and oils painted by Adolf Hitler, which the brothers have defaced with hippie motifs. Jake Chapman described most of the dictator’s works as ‘awful landscapes‘ which they had ‘prettified‘.

On a general level, if Rome was the art world capital from the Renaissance to the 1850s, Paris from the 1850s until WWII, a title which Paris lost to New York after the war; could it possibly be that London, with artists such as Emin, Hirst and the Chapmans, is the current art world capital? I don’t see any other country but the UK coming with consistently exciting work.

Harvey Korman (1927 – 2008)

Blazing Saddles - Harvey Korman

Harvey Korman (right), click to play YouTube video

Blazing Saddles (1974) Harvey Korman

Blazing Saddles is world cinema classic #51.

See also YouTube – Dentist Sketch – The Carol Burnett Show, a hilarious comedy sketch with Korman in a supporting role, in which the latter is unable to keep from laughing. Korman was infamous for breaking character on The Carol Burnett Show when he would start laughing during sketches, usually due to the antics of Tim Conway, who would deliberately try to crack Korman up.

WMC#42: To shake memories into the air

This post rhymes with air

She threw back her hair
Like I wasn’t there
And she sipped on a julep.
Her shoulders were bare
And I tried not to stare

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYHEBa6Xx48&]

“Summer (The First Time)” (1973) by Bobby Goldsboro

A Hemisphere in Your Hair (French: Un hémisphère dans une chevelure) is a poem by Baudelaire collected in Paris Spleen.

Laisse-moi respirer longtemps, longtemps, l’odeur de tes cheveux, y plonger tout mon visage, comme un homme altéré dans l’eau d’une source, et les agiter avec ma main comme un mouchoir odorant, pour secouer des souvenirs dans l’air.
Long let me inhale, the odour of your hair,
into it plunge the whole of my face, like a thirsty man
into the waters of a spring and wave it in my fingers like a scented handkerchief,
to shake memories into the air.

In the film Withnail & I Richard Griffith’s character recites the line “Laisse-moi respirer longtemps, longtemps, l’odeur de tes cheveux” (Eng: Long let me inhale, the odour of your hair).

Elsewhere #9

An Almeh by Gerome

An Almeh by Jean-Léon Gérôme

Notice the enticing quality of the semi-transparent voile. Voile is French for veil.

  1. New or newly discovered blogs dedicated to individual artists: Jean-Léon Gérôme [2] and Odilon Redon [3]
  2. The anglophone film blog Flickhead[1] quits.
  3. Trevor Brown reports[4] on a friendly letter received by Belgian artist Wim Delvoye after Trevor had caught him plagiarizing his work in Delvoye’s tattooed pigs project[5].
  4. To start your Monday musically, here is the video[6] of “Crank That (Soulja Boy),” just a quick reminder that I like (some) of my black music funky (in its original meaning, smelly and dirty) as well as dangerous-sounding. “Crank Dat” has the most original use of the steel pan since Mad Professor‘s[7] use of it in the early 1990s (I can’t remember the name of that album). Since its release in 2007 “Crank Dat,” which epitomizes the gangster sound, sold over three million copies.

Click legend: all text links are internal, numbers are external.