1 pce.

Summer's End

 

Cloud shadows rush over drying hay,

fences, dusty lane, and railroad ravine.

The first yellowing fronds of goldenrod

brighten the margins of the woods.

Excerpt from:

 Three Songs at the End of Summer 

By Jane Kenyon

Painting: Maureen Gallace

"New Orleans After the Deluge"

In 2007, Smith Magazine serialized a comics treatment of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. That work, "A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge," tracked the lives of seven New Orleans residents as they fled, remained and struggled to survive and recover not just their things but their lives. Its creator, Josh Neufeld, is best known for his collaborations with Harvey Pekar.

"A.D." sketches the incomprehensible: the storm that covers the city like a palm covering a dime; the buzzing of mosquitoes, septic and insouciant, in the fetid night; the overwhelming memories that leave a survivor bug-eyed and drowning. It is the people's history of Katrina; their experience of the hurricane, the flood and the government. Neufeld is sensitive to the failure of local and federal authorities as well as to the dangers of gangs and thugs in a blackout of law. But he remains objective -- reporting rather than pointing fingers at either the thugs that were there or specific politicians and agencies that fell woefully short.

objective -- reporting rather than pointing fingers at either the thugs that were there or specific politicians and agencies that fell woefully short.

link: The L.A. Times

National Portrait Gallery Exhibits Portrait of Ted Kennedy by Andy Warhol

The Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery

 installed a portrait of Sen. Edward Kennedy by Andy Warhol. It went on view when the museum opened to the public at 11:30 a.m. in a first-floor gallery that is designated for remembrance of recently deceased individuals represented in the gallery’s collection.

 

Warhol’s silkscreened portrait of Kennedy was created in 1980 to raise funds for Kennedy’s campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. A special feature of the print is Warhol’s use of the colors of the American flag and diamond dust. The Portrait Gallery acquired the portrait in 2000.

 

Kennedy built on this legacy when he sought the presidency in 1980. Andy Warhol's silkscreened portrait, created as a campaign fund-raiser, plays off the colors of the American flag and suggests the glamour of politics by enhancing the candidate's features with thin red and blue lines and diamond dust. Warhol’s portrait of Kennedy is now on display at the National Portrait Gallery, on the museum’s first floor. 

via: artdaily

"One Art"

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;

so many things seem filled with the intent

to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster

of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.

The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:

places, and names, and where it was you meant

to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or

next-to-last, of three loved houses went.

The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,

some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.

I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture

I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident

the art of losing’s not too hard to master

though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

         Elizabeth Bishop, “One Art” 

         Photograph: Uta Barth

Sink or Swim

Note found stuffed into a vase at a thrift store.

via:  Found Magazine

"Égoïste! Égoïste! Égoïste"

TV Spot,1990 Directed by Jean-Paul Goude

Extensive Antony Gormley Exhibition

San Idelfonso College presents an exhibition of work by British sculptor Antony Gormley, bringing together installations, free standing sculptures, and works on paper from throughout Gormley’s career in what will be the most extensive presentation to date of his work. 

Over the last 25 years Antony Gormley has revitalized the human image in sculpture through a radical investigation of the body as a place of memory and transformation, using his own body as subject, tool and material. Since 1990 he has expanded his concern with the human condition to explore the collective body and the relationship between self and other in large-scale installations. Gormley’s recent work increasingly engages with energy systems, fields and vectors, rather than mass and defined volume.

The body as a point of departure has been the basis of the work of Antony Gormley for over thirty years. For the artist, one springboard for his sculpture is the relationship between physical sensations and the surroundings. Gormley sees the body as a receptacle, a place for energy to move about, thoughts.

via: artdaily

Bring to Light

For many years there has been a kind of secret museum of photography under the streets of northwest Washington — an immense, windowless, climate-controlled archive with roots reaching back more than a century.

And since the early 1980s just one man, William C. Bonner, has been the museum’s primary denizen, becoming intimately familiar with its holdings: more than 11 million images richly documenting the life of the 20th century, from Uganda to the Mississippi Delta to remote lamaseries near the Mongolian border. “People don’t realize how beautiful this collection is,” Mr. Bonner said, “and it’s a shame, in a way, that I’m the only one who’s seen many of these pictures.”

The pictures make up the archive of the National Geographic Society, and it was this sentiment, said Mr. Bonner, the society’s archivist, that motivated him and officials there to explore the idea of opening up the holdings to the fine-art market for the first time. National Geographic’s goal is to find private and institutional collectors for the vintage black-and-white prints and later color images.

After considering proposals from several dealers, the society recently chose the Steven Kasher Gallery in Chelsea, which has worked with several other large archives of photojournalistic images. On Sept. 17 the gallery will open its first exhibition of National Geographic pictures — 150 vintage prints from a dozen photographers.

via: Treasures From an Underground Trove, By Randy Kennedy 

 The New York Times

Philip Glass 1979 segment The Geometry of Circles for Sesame Street.

"If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite." William Blake

Drawn from the Morgan's extensive holdings of works by William Blake (1757–1827), this exhibition is the museum's first in more than twenty years devoted to the breadth of his literary accomplishments and artistic influence. Blake is equally renowned as poet and artist, printmaker and engraver.

The Morgan holds one of the most important Blake collections in this country. William Blake's World: "A New Heaven is Begun" includes major examples of Blake's illuminated works and engravings as well as single drawings. It will also feature the complete watercolors of The Book of Job and Milton's L'Allegro and Il Penseroso, all of which represent the peak of Blake's artistry.