The Clash of Images

I just finished Abdelfattah Kilito's The Clash of Images, a series of thirteen stories about a boy named Abdallah growing up in urban Morocco.

The Quarterly Conversation has a great review of this lovely, slender book, and I'm afraid I can't quite do the same justice. I can say, however, that "Pleiades" might be one of the most perfect little pieces I've read this year, and "Cinedays," which follows it, is a stunning observation on how people a world away from America take the same cultural touchstone (in this case, a Western) and dissect, remix, and reimagine the object into a wholly new vision.

Ice ice Buddha

This cell phone picture is admittedly terrible, but do not let that stop you: go, now, to the Rubin Museum and see the ice sculpture of the Buddha before it melts (the Rubin will be open all night, but who knows how long the piece will last?).

This piece, by Atta Kim, is Monologue of Ice, and if you so choose, you can leave with a little vial of the water that has run off the sculpture (we did!). Kim is a South Korean photographer whose work has frequently touches on Buddhist themes; he documents the sculptures (he's also done, for example, Mao in ice) as they fade away. It's really unbelievably cool, both literally and figuratively.

Tea for two

From annwood.net, a tutorial on how to make your own papier-mâché teacups. Well, I know what I'm doing this weekend! The template, in PDF, can be found here, but the site offers great step-by-step instructions and pictures of how things should look along the way.

Animals: Outside or in?

I've recently happened upon a few mentions of Colleen Plumb's Animals Are Outside Today, which is both a book and an exhibition at Jen Bekman Gallery, which runs through April 24, 2011.

Although same might find it scattered stylistically, I really liked the breadth of images presented. Some of the shots are impressionistic; in one that looks almost like a watercolor (Albrecht and Corwin, Canyon Deer, 2000), two horses stand before a field of pastels. Others are photo-realistic, but obfuscate the focus on the animal that is the explicit subject of her work – just two mountainous humps signify the subject in Horseback, 1999.

From the artist's statement:

Contradictions define our relationships with animals. We love and admire them; we are entertained and fascinated by them ... At the same time, we eat, wear and cage them with seeming indifference, consuming them, and images of them, in countless ways.

Our connection to animals today is often developed through assimilation and appropriation; we absorb them into our lives, yet we no longer know of their origin. Most people are cut off from the steps involved in their processing or acquisition, shielded from witnessing their death or decay. This work moves within these contradictions, always questioning if the notion of the sacred, and the primal connection to Nature that animals convey and inspire, will survive alongside our evolution.

(Above: Nungesser Elephant, 2010.)

Helping hand

Although I advocate donating to the Red Cross or another vetted organization directly to help with relief in Japan, I am also heartened by the efforts of artists to raise awareness and lend a hand.

Flavorwire has a great gallery of artists selling pieces to benefit relief efforts in the wake of the country's devastating earthquake and tsunami. The print above, designed by Max Erdenberger of W+K Studio, is $25, and 100% of the profits go to the Red Cross.

How to rebuff a suitor

Simply shout, "Unhand me, greybeard loon!" This was Beverly Cleary's course of action when her first boyfriend got a little aggressive. She explains, "He obeyed, but he must have been mystified by the words from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner."

I just finished A Girl From Yamhill, and I don't know that I could have enjoyed it more. Cleary, who you know as the mind behind Ramona Quimby, recounts her girlhood in Depression-era Oregon; the language is simple and the stories nothing outrageous, but her high spirits and quiet intelligence shine through on every page.

(An unrelated factoid: we went to the same summer camp (Namanu!), though I swam in the Sandy River about sixty-five years after she did.)

I'm only happy when it rains

Umbrellas in Paris, looking down from the top of Notre Dame.

Intersections

From Paris, February 2011, where the Rue de Seine meets the Rue de Buc.

In the looking glass

Reviewing the more than 900 pictures I took in our six days in Paris, a few prominent subjects emerge: schlocky self-portraits, cemetery ephemera, and street art. Here we are, being goofy, posing in the reflection of a sculpture made up of gigantic mirrored balls that was in a garden not so far from the Louvre.

Femmes au Jardin

Our plane got in to Paris at 6 a.m., and after we dropped our bags at the hotel in the Latin Quarter, we did quite a bit of wandering, ultimately ending up at Musee d'Orsay. The space is amazing -- it was once a railway station -- and its collection consists of a good deal of Impressionist and post-Impressionst works, including those by artists such as Monet, Manet, Gauguin, Van Gogh, and Cézanne. (One note on Cézanne: comparing Apples and oranges as reproduced in books and as it is rendered in its full glory on canvas is like, well, comparing apples and oranges. It is spectacular up close.)

I'm familiar with a lot of these fellows, but my art history is otherwise a little weak. So I was delighted to discover a room devoted to Les Nabis, a collective of artists in France in the late 19th century; the four paintings above make up Femmes au jardin, 1891, by Pierre Bonnard, a co-founder of the group. I'll have to do more research when I the closest reference is not Wikipedia (and when I've had more than two hours of sleep on an airplane to fuel me), but generally, Les Nabis was "considered to be on the cutting edge of modern art during their early period; their subject matter was representational (though often symbolist in inspiration), but was design oriented along the lines of the Japanese prints they so admired, and art nouveau."

Bonnard's Le chat blanc (1894), Paul Ranson's Lustral (1891), Edouard Vuillard's Portrait de K-X Roussel dit le liseur (1890), and Paul Sérusier's Le talisman (1888) also stood out.