Without Lifting A Finger

‘Look at this flower,’ said I to the philosopher, ‘it is utterly impossible that this symmetry with its definitely numbered points and indentations, these little white and red streaks, this little golden crown in the middle, should not have been thought out beforehand! And how beautiful and charming it is, a poem, a work of art, a witticism, a bright-coloured, fragrant jest! A thing like that does not make itself!’ ‘It is beautiful in any case,’ said the philosopher, ‘whether it has been made or not! Put a question to it! The flower says nothing, it has no time for talking either, for it has to blossom and cannot bother about your doubts. For all these are doubts, which you are voicing, doubts of God, and contemptible doubts of Nature; and it makes me sick just to listen to a doubter, a sentimental doubter! Oh dear!’ He had heard this played as a trump card in the arguments of older people and he used it against me now, as well as other skirmishing devices of the kind which he had adop...

Harry K Stammer (harry k stammer): Kinda following in the footprints of Mark Young's Otoliths (still available online but has officially "breathed its last") with UTRICULI. Some wild stuff. Anything goes. You'll enjoy flipping through all of it: Issue 1: Parts 1 & 2. I have three "longish" pieces ("Castlerigg," "Bent Neil," "The Sum of All Our Hopes and Fears") in Part 1. I guess you'll also be able to purchase it on Amazon soon. https://www.sandy-press.com/ #rlswihart #poetry #art #harrykstammer #utriculi #tgif #readmorepoetry2024🎈♥️🪶

Three months after the first meeting of Porbus and Poussin, the former went to see Maitre Frenhofer. He found the old man a prey to one of those deep, self-developed discouragements, whose cause, if we are to believe the mathematicians of health, lies in a bad digestion, in the wind, in the weather, in some swelling of the intestines, or else, according to casuists, in the imperfections of our moral nature; the fact being that the good man was simply worn out by the effort to complete his mysterious picture. He was seated languidly in a large oaken chair of vast dimensions covered with black leather; and without changing his melancholy attitude he cast on Porbus the distant glance of a man sunk in absolute dejection. "Well, maitre," said Porbus, "was the distant ultra-marine, for which you journeyed to Brussels, worthless? Are you unable to grind a new white? Is the oil bad, or the brushes restive?"

"Nevertheless," he continued, sadly, "I am not satisfied; there are moments when I have my doubts. Perhaps it would be better not to sketch a single line. I ask myself if I ought not to grasp the figure first by its highest lights, and then work down to the darker portions. Is not that the method of the sun, divine painter of the universe? O Nature, Nature! who has ever caught thee in thy flights? Alas! the heights of knowledge, like the depths of ignorance, lead to unbelief. I doubt my work."

 Three bits: The apartment was on the second floor of what had been, in the eighteenth century, a private townhouse in an old quarter of the capital. Many artists lived in this part of the city, faithful to the principle that in art, the search for the new must be done within a framework of the old. Jonas, who shared this conviction, was delighted to be living in this quarter. * The disciples explained to Jonas at length what he had painted, and why. Jonas thus discovered in his work many intentions that rather surprised him, and a host of things he had not put there. * Until this period, Jonas was always secretly ashamed of his utter inability to judge a work of art. Exception was made for a handful of paintings that transported him, and for obviously crude scribblings, all of which seemed to him equally interesting and indifferent.

In the church of the Eremitani I have seen pictures by Mantegna, one of the older painters, at which I am astonished. What a sharp, strict actuality is exhibited in these pictures! It is from this actuality, thoroughly true, not apparent, merely and falsely effective, and appealing solely to the imagination, but solid, pure, bright, elaborated, conscientious, delicate, and circumscribed—an actuality which had about it something severe, credulous, and laborious; it is from this, I say, that the later painters proceeded (as I remarked in the pictures of Titian), in order that by the liveliness of their own genius, the energy of their nature illumined at the same time by the mind of the predecessors, and exalted by their force, they might rise higher and higher, and elevated above the earth, produce forms that were heavenly indeed, but still true. Thus was art developed after the barbarous period.

It causes us so agreeable a sensation to occupy ourselves with what we can only half do, that no person ought to find fault with the dilettante, when he is spending his time over an art which he can never learn; nor blame the artist if he chooses to pass out over the border of his own art, and amuse himself in some neighboring field.

 Salton Sea. Bombay Beach. More Art. #rlswihart13 #rl_swihart #saltonsea #savesaltonsea #bombaybeach #airplanes #installations #sculpture #art #travel #stayclose #birdsbirdsbirds #poetry #readmorepoetry #offcourse #piffmagaxine #quadrantmagazine 

 Salton Sea. Bombay Beach. Installation of crashed plane. Artist Randy Polumbo. #rlswihart13 #rl_swihart #saltonsea #savesaltonsea #savebirds #savelives #savefuture #bombaybeach #crashedplane #installation  #randypolumbo #art #travel #stayclose #staysafe #poetry #readmorepoetryin2021

   Now, as never before, it was clear to him that art is always, ceaselessly, occupied with two things. It constantly reflects on death and thereby constantly creates life. Great and true art, that which is called the Revelation of St. John and that which goes on to finish it.

Doctor Zhivago. Painting remembered by Lara: "The Woman or the Vase" by Henryk Siemiradski. #rlswihart13 @rl_swihart #painting #art #poetry #Zhivago #lara #komarovsky #literature #pasternak #henryksiemiradski #polishartist

Long Beach Art Museum. Larry Shep (who studied with Voulkos). Near the parking lot and Ocean Blvd. Reminds me somehow of our world and also something Rilke wrote in his letters just before he died (if I can find it, I'll post). #rlswihart13 @rl_swihart #art #sculpture #larryshep #voulkos #LongBeach #artmuseum #poetry #ReadMore #whitebird #woodhenge #followfollowsaidtheswallow  

Sleep and His Half-Brother Death (by John William Waterhouse). Picture from Wikipedia. Greek Myth: Hypnos and Thanatos #rlswihart #woodhenge #waterhouse #sleep #death #poetry #readmorepoetry2020

The very next morning she dressed with care in discreet black and walked towards Unter den Linden to call on the Minister’s wife. She sent in her card which bore only the words: ‘Effi von Innstetten, née von Briest’. Everything else had been left off, including ‘Baroness’. ‘Her Excellency will see you’–Effi followed the servant into an anteroom where she sat down and, in spite of her agitation, examined the pictures decorating the walls, first Guido Reni’s Aurora, then opposite a few English etchings, engravings after Benjamin West in the familiar style of aquatints, full of light and shade. One of them was of King Lear on the blasted heath. 

Franz Nölken  (5 May 1884, Borgeln,  North Rhine-Westphalia [1]  - 4 November 1918, near  La Capelle ) was a German  Expressionist  painter; occasionally associated with  Die Brücke , an artists' society in Dresden. Biography When he was still a small child, his family moved to Hamburg. At the age of sixteen, he began attending the  Johanneum , a liberal arts  gymnasium . On the advice of  Alfred Lichtwark , the Director of the  Hamburger Kunsthalle , he took classes from  Arthur Siebelist , who eschewed the Academic approach and took his students to paint en  plein aire . He joined the  Hamburgischer Künstlerklub  [ de ]  in 1903 and, the following year, had his first exhibition at the prestigious  Galerie Commeter  [ de ]  with fellow students  Friedrich Ahlers-Hestermann ,  Fritz Friedrichs ,  Walter Alfred Rosam  and  Walter Voltmer  [ de ] . [1] ...

Third time, so I took few pics. Took some friends. They enjoyed. The big Sam Francis still alluring. How exactly did they "chop up" the Basel Murals and why can't t they display them collectively in one space? And why advertise that there's something underneath Van Gogh's Winter (The Vicarage Garden under Snow), and then not? Anyway, a beautiful day. We came up Orange Grove and saw all the grandstand seats (for a price) for the Rose Parade. Holidays California style. * All the way from Dresden: Titian's Portrait of a Lady in White . I think (over time) I became more intrigued with Guido Reni's St. Cecelia (nearby), but I didn't take her pic. And I was also pleased (for a few) with Lucas Cranach the Elder's Adam and Eve (two separate pics). *

Has made me want to reread the correspondence: Flaubert & Sand. If not next, soon. * He does, however, restate his aesthetic one final, forceful time. At Nohant they had playfully named a ram after him—the two M. Gustaves had been introduced to each other in 1869—and even in his last tormented years he can still put his head down and charge. Art is not a vomitorium where one relieves one’s personal feelings; the artist must be hidden in the work as God is in Nature; a novel should imply, not state, its moral; form and content are interdependent; the truth of an observation or description is a good in itself; style is not a question of surface gloss—on the contrary, good writing implies good thinking. Of course, he does not convince Sand, any more than she does him: tulips are not going to flower in the potato fields at this late stage.

A gift from Italy (I read). Used to be the biggest -- in LA, US, or world? I was exiting the city (wanted to get a feel for where the Bradbury is) -- going south on Broadway. Passed some scary stuff: trash, graffiti, tent villages. Then this came into view. *