Thursday, 9 April 2009

More ways to waste time



Recordaras, sung by Luz Casal, from Pedro Almodóvar's High Heels (1991). Again, another film built around the fractured relationship between a mother and her daughter. Not unlike Autumn Sonata, a previous More ways to waste time entry (and the reason I am convinced I never needed to see a shrink), which is directly quoted.

Wednesday, 8 April 2009

Algo más










Something more of Ruven Alfanador, matillas, and Spain.

These large scaled photographs were part of the of the exhibition Mil besos by Ruven Alfanador promoting the 2008 XV Bienal del Flamenco. A total of sixty-four images lined the streets of Seville.

Images from El País and Holas Crayolas

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Now playing on iTunes: Martha Reeves & The Vandellas - Dancing in the Street
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Torero








TORERO by Ruven Afanador

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Now playing on iTunes: Estrella Morente - A Pastora
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Tuesday, 7 April 2009

Taking the veil

The mantilla.





Portrait of actress Hedy Lamarr by Eliot Elisofon for Life, 1946.
Miss Lamarr wears a black lace mantilla and black lace-trimmed dress.



Mrs. Jacqueline Kennedy, and her hostess, the Duchess of Alba, wearing Mantillas of White Lace, Attended the Seville bullfights April 21, 1966. Photograph by Bettmann.



Carmen Polo and Francisco Franco at the procession of the Virgen de Valvanera.


Mourning Portrait of the Duchess of Alba by Francisco Goya, 1797.


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Now playing on iTunes: Johnny Cash - The Long Black Veil
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The polite look of fascism


General Francisco Franco and his wife Carmen Polo.

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Now playing on iTunes: Moby - Extreme Ways
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Monday, 6 April 2009

Dirty pansies


Heartsease


Viola Sorbet Antique Shades




Viola Bowles Black (t)
Viola Molly Sanderson (b)


Viola, call the gardener.

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Now playing on iTunes: Billie Holiday - Violets for Your Furs
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White, yellow, and green


Pavlova from la.foodblogging

Ingredients:

6 egg whites
a pinch of cream of tartar
superfine sugar
dash of white wine vinegar

whipping cream
vanilla essence
the pulp of 4 passionfruit
sliced kiwi fruit
sliced star fruit

Visit la.foodblogging for method and a more exact recipe.


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Now playing on iTunes: Kylie Minogue - Your Disco Needs You
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Petrology



Lot No 1282
Series of five graduated polyester Rock lights, circa 1970, by Andre Cazenave. Most bearing a paper label to the underside - A. Cazenave, Disderot-Editeur, Paris. Made in France - the smallest h. 5", dia. 7", the largest h. 12-1/2", dia. 19".

New Orleans Auction Galleries, Inc.

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Now playing on iTunes: Harold Budd & Brian Eno - Among Fields of Crystal
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Sunday, 5 April 2009

More ways to waste time


Sudden Fear (1952)

Sudden Fear (1952), the four time Academy Award nominated stylish film noir thriller starring Joan Crawford and Jack Palance. Featuring Gloria Grahame, Bruce Bennett, Virginia Huston, and Touch Connors. Shot on location in San Francisco.

Kiss me, kiss me hard.



The scenario...is designed to allow Miss Crawford a wide range of quivering reactions to vicious events, as she passes through the stage of starry-eyed love, terrible disillusionment, fear, hatred, and finally hysteria. With her wide eyes and forceful bearing, she is the woman for the job. - Otis L. Guernsey, Jr., New York Herald Tribune (1952)

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Now playing on iTunes: Nancy Sinatra - Lies
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Saturday, 4 April 2009

Strangers with candy


Candy J - Why Are You Wasting My Time

Go on, have some.

More tales from the road


Paramoudra on chalk outcrop.

Can I ask a question, what is that?

That - is a Norfolk flint rock. And, before you ask - yes, your husband does look gay.*

* No I didn't really say it, but oh how I wanted to. Had I been in a more jovial hail fellow well met frame of mind I would have. Tell the truth and shame the devil.

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Now playing on iTunes: Village People - Y.M.C.A.
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Thursday, 2 April 2009

Master class

Interior Design: The New Freedom

Mr. Ward Bennett - acclaimed as an American icon, yet he never became a household word.



Ward Bennett's Manhattan apartment in the Dakota, photographed by Jaime Ardiles-Arce.


I-Beam


Sled Chair




Barbaralee Diamonstein-Spielvogel talks with Ward Bennett, from Duke University's Diamonstein-Spielvogel Video Archive, Lilly Library Film and Video Collection.



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Now playing on iTunes: Johnny and the Hurricanes - Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?
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Wednesday, 1 April 2009

Viola, if Madonna calls


If Madonna Calls - Junior Vasquez

Find out what she wants.

Monday, 30 March 2009

Lost to a world in which I crave no part


Plan for the Motherwell house.


A bedroom showing the unique floor of inlaid tree sections set in cement.



Robert Motherwell inside his adapted Quonset hut residence in Georgica, 1950 by Hans Namuth.


Internal view of the east facade.


East facade of the Motherwell House, 1985.


Though East Hampton figures briefly in the life of the painter Robert Motherwell, the village played a significant role in shaping his career and his legacy. The youngest, wealthiest, and best educated of the Abstract Expressionists, Motherwell first came to the East End during the summer of 1944 to visit the older Surrealists in exile. A snapshot records the twenty-four-year-old playing chess with Max Ernst outdoors in Amagansett. In the Hamptons, Motherwell met Mark Rothko and other American artists; painted the semi-figurative works The Emperor of China and The Homely Protestant; initiated his most critically acclaimed series, Elegy to the Spanish Republic; and coedited the lone issue of the journal possiblities. Oils featuring linear, somewhat representational forms on ocher-covered surfaces eventually gave way to canvases with larger-scaled, more muscular black and white shapes. After he purchased a four-acre lot at the corner of Georgica and Jericho roads in East Hampton for about $1,200, Motherwell commissioned a house and studio from Pierre Chareau, the French architect who co-designed the Maison de Verre, a Paris landmark of the International Style. Although the architect used two prefabricated Quonset hut kits purchased for $3,000 each, costs mounted when doors, windows, balconies, and flooring had to be made by hand. Motherwell sold the house in 1952. Chareau’s only work in America, it was leveled in 1985. Motherwell later summered in Provincetown, Massachusetts, and spent his last years in Greenwich, Connecticut. In his seventies, he said about his East Hampton period, “I did my best work there.” - written by Phyllis Tuchman for The Parrish Art Museum


Further reading, Robert Motherwell's Life in the Hamptons by Mary Cummings.




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Now playing on iTunes: Joan Armatrading - Save Me
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Sunday, 29 March 2009

More ways to waste time

It would be a crime not to explore the wealth that is Australian cinema. Each decade Australia manages to produce some of the most memorable films of the period (unfortunately the same cannot be said for its music). Along with the internationally well known Mad Max (1979) and the relatively little known, but highly acclaimed, Storm Boy (1976) these were the stars of the 70s:


Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)


Sunday Too Far Away (1975)


The Chant Of Jimmie Blacksmith (1978)


My Brilliant Career (1979)


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Now playing on iTunes: Kylie Minogue - Can't Get You Out of My Head
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Saturday, 28 March 2009

Would you? Could you?



Well, someone could and did today.
Though on him it looked more of an A-line than a bomber shape.


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Now playing on iTunes: Bruce Springsteen - Born In the U.S.A.
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More tales from the road


The Wiz

As a way to promote the antiques market (or what's left of it), The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in its finite wisdom is thinking of creating a yellow brick road on Portotobello. Cute? No. Inane? Absolutely.

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Now playing on iTunes: Elton John - Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
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Friday, 27 March 2009

There will be times when the trees will be bare


Winter Landscape, 1972. Etching on paper.



Two Trees, 1999. Etching on paper.


Stanislav Nikireyev (1932-2007), one of the most remarkable masters of modern Russian fine arts. Experts consider his works a unique phenomenon in current landscape art and his etching techniques follow the legacy of the old masters, such as Albrecht Duerer, Rembrandt van Rijn and especially Pieter Brueghel the Elder. - Oleg Nikireyev



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Now playing on iTunes: Hubert Laws - The Rite of Spring
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Thursday, 26 March 2009

Question:

When are fake flowers acceptable?



Answer:

Nevah.

Shame on you Carlos Mota.

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Now playing on iTunes: Talk Talk - Such A Shame
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All the Russias





















Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii, Russian chemist and photographer, best known for his pioneering work in colour photography of early 20th century Russia. With the support of Tsar Nicholas II, he undertook a photographic survey of the Russian Empire between 1909-1912, and again in 1915.

After Prokudin-Gorskii's death in 1944, the archive was acquired by the Library of Congress. An exhibition, The Empire That Was Russia : The Prokudin-Gorskii Photographic Record Recreated, was held in 2001.


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