April 11, 2019 at 7:20 pm (Artists and Writers, The Economist)
Tags: art, inspiration, museum
An article on Artemisia Gentileschi is in the Books section.
Illustration: Gentileschi’s Judith Beheading Holofernes
“Gentileschi’s Self-Portrait as St. Catherine of Alexandria was acquired last year by the National Gallery in London, becoming only the 21st work by a woman in a 2,300-piece collection.”
Artemisia Gentileschi was the “first female artist to be admitted to the Accademia delle Arti del Disegno in Florence.” She was raped by Agostino Tassi, who her father had hired “to teach her perspective.” Her father “petitioned the pope for compensation. His daughter was considered damaged goods.” The case went to trial. Tassi, found guilty, “was exiled from Rome,” but continued to receive commissions from successive popes.
Gentileschi was “married off to a mediocre artist” but “nevertheless set up her own studio . . . She worked in Naples and London. She became the great artist she always wanted to be.”
“A play about Gentileschi’s travails that won awards at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival last year, transferred to London and will soon be staged elsewhere.”
“Roughly 60 paintings by Gentileschi survive . . . ”
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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February 1, 2019 at 3:12 pm (Artists and Writers, destinations, Links, Places, Recommended, Tel Aviv, Traveling)
Tags: art, Cee Neuner, England, Fridays, Israel, literary festivals, poetry
Thanks once again to Cee Neuner for the Fun Foto Challenge!
Last October, self was in the historic English town of Winchester, which was hosting a Poetry Festival. The next Winchester Poetry Festival will be October 2020.
Winchester, England: City Map, October 2018
Tel Aviv Artist Reuven Rubin
A friend made this bag for self.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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January 24, 2019 at 4:18 pm (Artists and Writers, Books, destinations, Holidays, Links, Traveling, Women Writers)
Tags: art, Cambridge, Cee Neuner, England, Events, exhibits, London, museums, translation
This week, Cee Neuner’s Fun Foto Challenge is BLUE AND YELLOW.
As it’s a grey and chilly morning where self is, the Blue and Yellow will come from her archives.
Here’s a picture she took in Heathrow, December 2018. Somewhat blue and yellow:
The Oceania Exhibit at the Royal Academy of Art in London. The yellow is in the gilt frames on the wall.
Finally, sign on a sidewalk in front of Blackwell’s bookstore in Cambridge, England. Blue and Yellow, upper right-hand corner:
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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January 22, 2019 at 4:57 pm (Artists and Writers, Recommended, The New York Times)
Tags: art, causes, documentaries, experimental, review
Excerpt from A. O. Scott review of Adina Pintilie’s semi-documentary Touch Me Not (The New York Times, Friday, 11 January 2019), which self really wants to see:
Bodies Are a Wonderland (Entry Restricted)
Propelled by intuition, emotion and philosophical inquiry rather than by plot, Pintile’s debut feature is a semidocumentary essay exploring what it means — how it feels, why it matters — to dwell inside a body. You could say that what the film is about lies just beyond the reach of images or words. It’s a necessarily cerebral meditation on the nature of physicality.
The director’s initial verbal reticence contrasts with both the eloquence of some of her characters and subjects and the explicitness of the images she captures. Nakedness and intimacy — the first almost too easy to achieve, the second almost impossibly difficult — are the basic themes of Touch Me Not.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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January 21, 2019 at 12:24 am (Dearest Mum, Family, Lists, Personal Bookshelf, Philippine History, Sundays)
Tags: art, exhibits, Manila, memories, The Philippines
Self’s childhood home in Manila was crammed with santoses (religious statues). Dearest Mum collected them.
L: San Vicente Ferrer R: San Pedro Martir
The santos carvers were unknown. It was an industry, like making furniture. The head and hands of the figures were usually ivory.
The caption for San Pedro Martir reads, in entirety:
- Ivory head and hands on batikuling body. A bolo (machete), now missing, the instrument of his martyrdom, was originally embedded in his cranium. He is usually depicted holding a palm of martyrdom, also missing. 19th century.
Batikuling is a Philippine tree, presently listed as endangered.
Stay tuned.
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September 25, 2018 at 10:55 pm (Artists and Writers, Family, Places)
Tags: art, Cee Neuner, exhibits, Gardens, Golden Gate Park, museums, nostalgia, Redwood City, San Francisco, The Philippines
Love Cee Neuner’s Fun Foto Challenge!
This week’s challenge is PASTEL COLORS.
It turned out to be surprisingly hard to find photos with predominantly pastel colors!
These flesh-coloured gourd plants were at the San Francisco Conservatory of Flowers:
The Magritte exhibit at SFMOMA on self’s birthday in July:
A bit of nostalgia:
Map of the Philippines, Son’s Room in Redwood City, California
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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August 4, 2018 at 3:43 pm (Artists and Writers, Books, Explorers, Recommended, Surprises, Traveling)
Tags: art, biographies, essay, history, memories, museums, Paris, review, Saturday, The New Yorker
- In Renaissance Florence, a number of designated boxes placed throughout the city allowed citizens to make anonymous denunciations of various moral crimes — in 1461, for example, the artist-monk Filippo Lipi was accused of fathering a child with a nun.
— Claudia Roth Pierpoint, “Angels and Men” in The New Yorker (16 October 2017)
The article is a review of the Walter Isaacson biography of Leonardo da Vinci, called Leonardo da Vinci. One of the biggest surprises in the piece is the discovery that “one of the last remaining complete notebooks, the Codex Leicester,” is in the possession of Microsoft founder Bill Gates. Also: “Leonardo was illegitimate, gay, vegetarian, left-handed, easily distracted . . . ”
Dear blog readers, last year self saw the Mona Lisa. It was May or June. A Spanish woman asked self whether she knew where the famous painting was located. Then she asked a museum guard, and the two of us went looking together. And we found it. And she asked self to take pictures of her standing in front of it. And insisted on taking a few of self.
And here’s a wide-angle shot of the gallery housing the Mona Lisa and then self making a horrible face because, honestly, she dislikes having her picture taken (not when the humidity has done things to her hair) and the crowded gallery full of people aiming their cell phones in one direction was so disorienting.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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July 19, 2018 at 6:22 pm (Artists and Writers, destinations, Family, Food and Drink, Lists, Places, Recommended)
Tags: art, desserts, exhibits, happiness, museums, praise, restaurants, San Francisco
Self has seen it three times.
The Magritte-themed food in the fifth floor café is so much fun:
In the adjoining sculpture garden, you can pose in front of this sign and you will look fabulous and so ‘San Francisco’:
Andrew and Jennie, 14 July 2018
There is a great, really great interactive portion at the end: Raise your arms, and YOU’RE the Magritte!
More later. Stay tuned!
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July 17, 2018 at 7:47 pm (Artists and Writers, destinations, Family, Links, Places)
Tags: art, Cee Neuner, happiness, memories, museums, San Francisco, Saturday
Self’s entry for Cee Neuner’s Fun Foto Challenge this week (She invites us to derive what inspiration we can from a new photo every week — quite an interesting challenge!)
You can see the photo for Week 2 here. It’s a vivid picture: a wall mural in bright colors, a vintage truck with a raised hood.
Self chose to focus on the colors. And, as luck would have it, she doesn’t have to search for very long before she stumbles on just the right pictures.
Last Saturday, son and his wife flew up from Orange County and we spent a day in the City. SO. MUCH. FUUUUN! Self had been raving about the Magritte exhibit at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art since forever. So that became our first stop.
We stopped for refreshments at the 5th floor café, and posed for pictures in the sculpture garden:
Andrew and Jennie, 14 July 2018
Here’s one last: Andrew and Jennie having fun at the interactive portion of the exhibit. The screen they’re staring at is bright blue, son is wearing a black sweater, and Jennie’s wearing a blue hoodie. So that’s an acceptable interpretation of the photo challenge, right? Not to mention: the cords for the audio guide are orange!
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 14 July 2018
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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July 16, 2018 at 12:00 am (Books, destinations, Links, Lists, Places, Sundays, Traveling)
Tags: art, England, historical fiction, Hyde Park, London, memorials, novel, reading lists, Scottish writers
The first time self read The Crimson Petal and the White, by Michael Faber, was over a decade ago. She hadn’t much experience of London. Now, however, she knows London, knows its general geography, and enjoys passages like the following:
- Since moving to the West End, Sugar has taken to crossing Hyde Park, over the Serpentine into Knightsbridge, and paying frequent visits to the two Georgian houses in Trevor Square, which may look like high-class brothels, but are in fact a public library.
— The Crimson Petal and the White, p. 35
- Follow Sugar now into the great open space, the grandiose vacancy of Regent Street — admire those overtowering honeycombs of palatial buildings stretching into the fog of artificial infinity, those thousands of identically shaped windows tier upon tier; the glassy expanse of roadway swept clear of snow; all of it is a statement of intent: a declaration that in the bright future to come, places like St. Giles and Soho, with their narrow labyrinths and tilting hovels and clammy, crumbling nooks infested with human flotsam, will be swept away, to be replaced by a new London that looks entirely like Regent Street, airy, regular and clean.
— The Crimson Petal and the White, p. 43
Her last trip to London was at the tail-end of October 2017. She dropped by Hyde Park and saw:
1) the Serpentine
2) a fabulous Pavilion
The 2017 Serpentine Pavilion designed by architect Francis Kéré
and 3) the Prince Albert Memorial:
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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