JEAN DELVILLE

Jean Delville (January 19, 1867 -- 1953) was a Belgian symbolist painter, writer, and occultist. He founded the Salon d'Art Idealiste, which is considered the Belgian equivalent to the Parisian Rose & Cross Salon and the Pre-Raphaelite movement in London. During the last decades of the 19th century, many people in the West reacted to the materialism and hypocrisy of the period by developing an interest in esoteric, occult and spiritual subjects. The enthusiasm for these ideas reached its peak during the 1890s, the decade when the Belgian painter and writer Jean Delville was at the height of his powers. Delville was born in the Belgian town of Louvain in 1867. He lived most of his life in Brussels, but also spent some years in Paris, Rome, Glasgow and London. He began his training at the Brussels Academy of Fine Arts when he was twelve, continuing there until 1889, and winning a number of top prizes. He began exhibiting professionally at the age of twenty, and later taught at the Academies of Fine Arts in Glasgow and Brussels. In addition to painting, Delville also expressed his ideas in numerous written texts.
"Understood in its metaphysical sense, Beauty is one of the manifestations of the Absolute Being. Emanating from the harmonious rays of the Divine plan, it crosses the intellectual plane to shine once again across the natural plane, where it darkens into matter." (Jean Delville)

Medusa

L'école de Platon

LE FRISSON DU SPHINX

Au pays des Huros, Rhamsès et Sésostris,

mais au temps des Latins et quand la rouge Rome

dressait de bronze et d'or ses empereurs flétris,

c'est l'heure où l'infini planète du cœur de l'homme,

Pareil à l'orbe élu des grands nimbes sacrés

dont la tête des saints futurs doit être ceinte,

la lune en fleur sourit ses rêves éthérés

dans l'encens sidéral frôlant la terre sainte.

Au loin des sables bleus du biblique désert,

couché dans son secret et sa béatitude,

le monstre égyptien, de son œil entr'ouvert,

fixe l'éternité parmi la solitude.

Nul souffle dans la nuit. Mais, parfois, obstiné,

le hurlement lointain d'un vieux fauve qui rôde

et renifle à longs traits, vers l'horizon tourné,

les tragiques relents du grand crime d'Hérode.

(Jean Delville 1897)

Portrait of Madame Stuart Merrill, Mysteriosa

                                                       

Orpheus

                                                     

The Idol of Perversity (1891 - Jean Delville)

                                                

The turned tree

ROGER GILBERT-LECOMTE

                                                 LA TEMPÊTE DES CYGNES

                                                                      ou

                                                 LA CONQUÊTE DES SIGNES

Lorsque les bleus Enfants trop naïfs vont se perdre

Aux chimériques bras d'une idole imbécile

Aux cornes d'un trois-mâts maléfique & fossile

Pour abriter leur cœur de soleil dans la cendre

Souvent, ayant caressés les fleurs autochtones

Trop longtemps au départ, ils vieillissent avant

D'avoir brûlé leurs doigts au moindre galhauban,

et vont se momifier au sel noir de l'Automne

Car ils n'ont pas connu les dangers que prépare

Au cœur trop pur le culte illusoire du blanc

Le blanc pourrit dans l'œuf lorsqu'il est ovipare

Pourrissent les couleurs comme pourrit le blanc

Le soleil qui se lève a besoin de béquilles,

L'horizon se contourne au son d'un scrofuleux,

Les rois boivent sans soif des alcools sulfureux

Mais nous avons caché le tonnerre en nos quilles.

Noirs comme des culs

Dahoméens appartenant aux sarcophages

Où dorment les Obis de plumes revêtus

Blancs comme la rage

Et les fruits pourrissent dans leurs mains d'or velu

Ont l'odeur de destin que nous avons voulu.

(Extrait des « Oeuvres complètes » tome II

de Roger Gilbert-Lecomte,

Éditions Gallimard 1977)

 

Bernice Kolko

Kahlo by Kolko

Bernice Kolko, was born in Poland and emigrated to the United States with her family at the end of the first World War. In 1932 she began her photographic career during a trip to Vienna, Austria where she worked with the celebrated Rudolph Koppitz. In 1934, upon her return to the United States, she settled in New York and had an exhibition at the gallery of the RKO radio station at Rockefeller Center. She participated with the Works Project Administration Project, an undertaking that gave great impetus to the arts after the Great Depression.
At the beginning of the Second World War, Kolko enlisted in the American Army and worked as a photographer. At the end of the war, she traveled to Los Angeles and worked with Man Ray; her experimental projects of that period include superimposed and solarized images, as well as work with abstract shapes. When she arrived in Mexico City in 1951, she had already had her work shown at several exhibitions, and received immediate media attention.
During the first year of her stay, she began a friendship with Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, the Siqueiros and the Chavez Morado family; she began a photographic project that dealt with Mexican artists and intellectuals of the time. Diego Rivera wrote:
"Her photographs have seemed to me to possess the highest technical quality, sensibility, curiosity and excellent taste. She chooses what is essential and which best expresses the subjects she chooses; her works are truly notable. In my opinion hers is the work of a great artist" .
Kolko traveled throughout the country, creating a trove of thousands of images while always calibrating intellectual and artistic work. Out of those trips her project Mujeres de México—Women of Mexico—was born.
Sophia Vackimes, Curator

Frida Kahlo in her garden at Coyoacán, 1952

FRIDA KAHLO Traveling Exhibit
    

THE DIARY OF FRIDA KAHLO, AN INTIMATE SELF-PORTRAIT

1 January 1953
xxxx 1953, Winter
Bernice Kolko
I think she
is a great art-
ist. She photographs re-
ality admir-
ably. (she is not a
Communist) An
American
citizen - Hungarian Jew
She says she is for
peace, but ........?

Α & Ω

Collage papiers, Cadavre Exquis
réalisé avec Cerkita Zünd

Teatro sin fin - Alejandro Jodorowsky Roland Topor Fernando Arrabal the panic movement.

Edgar Allan Poe, S. H. de Roos "THE CITY AND THE SEA" (édition clandestine)

THE CITY AND THE SEA
This edition, composed in "Ergmont"-type with "Erasmus"
initials both designed by S. H. de Roos, has been
printed in secret in the office of The "Busy
Bee", somewhere in occupied Holland. The
edition is limited to 500 numbered
copie on Dutch handmade
paper.

The city and the sea

Annabel Lee

The conqueror worm

 The raven

The sleeper

The bells

Nahui Olin. Una mujer de los tiempos modernos

Edward Weston - Nahui Olin, 1926

Carmen Mondragón o Nahui Olin (8 de julio de 1893 - 23 de enero de 1978) fue una poetisa y pintora mexicana, nació y murió en la Ciudad de México.
Junto a Dolores Del Rio, Guadalupe Marín, Antonieta Rivas Mercado, María Tereza Montoya, Frida Kahlo, Tina Modotti, Lupe Vélez y María Izquierdo, Mondragón formó parte de ese grupo de talentosas mujeres que durante las décadas de los 1920 y 1930 produjo uno de los períodos más activos y fascinantes de la cultura y el arte en México.
Hija del general Manuel Mondragón, recibió una educación privilegiada en México y Francia. Todos sus contemporáneos describieron su hipnótica y erótica belleza, la cual puede ser fácilmente constatada por las muchas fotografías que de ella existen.
Casó con el militar y pintor Manuel Rodríguez Lozano, y vivió con él en Francia y España por ocho años, pero a la larga la bisexualidad de Rodríguez Lozano implicó el fin del matrimonio, pues hay razones para creer que Mondragón era ninfómana. También se dice que ella asesinó al hijo de ambos, lo que causó la separación de la pareja.
De regreso en México Mondragón se sumerge en la vida artística del país, desayuna con José Vasconcelos y cena con Xavier Villaurrutia platicando del "Ulises", el teatro que habían fundado Rivas Mercado, Salvador Novo y el mismo Villaurrutia. También posó para Diego Rivera. Poco tiempo después inició una intensa y tormentosa relación con el pintor Gerardo Murillo, también conocido como Dr. Átl, el cual la bautizó con el nombre de Nahui Ollin, símbolo de renovación azteca. La relación terminó con la misma intensidad con la que inició, salvo que al final el odio logró desplazar al amor.
Si bien varias de sus pinturas y poemas no carecen de talento, Carmen Mondragón debe su celebridad más a su biografía que a sus trabajos. Fue la primera mujer que usó una minifalda en México y siempre gozó y exhaltó su sexualidad. En Hollywood posó desnuda para el fotógrafo Edward Weston, en lo que es quizás la mejor serie de retratos del estadunidense.
A los cuarenta años Mondragón, luego de tener y abandonar a varios amantes, se retira de la vida pública. Las siguientes décadas las pasaría en el centro de la ciudad, siguiendo una vida modesta, sola y rodeada de gatos. Hacia el final de su vida su lucidez se deterioró.
Al igual que con Frida Kahlo, en México existe un reciente y renovado interés por la vida y obra de la hermosa Nahui Olin.

Antonio Garduño (1885-1948) | Nahui Olin, Place, c. 1927

Nahui Olin. Una mujer de los tiempos modernos
Ensayo documental sobre la vida y obra de Carmen Mondragón, conocida como "NahuiOllin". Guión y dirección Eduardo Quiroz, producción Lourdes Villagomez, Fotografía en video Antonio Pardo.

Nahui Olin, fotografía de Antonio Garduño

Nahui Olin et le peintre Manuel Rodríguez Lozano 1913

Nahui Olin - Menelik

Nahui Olin - Autorretrato en el Puerto de Veracruz

The Night Life of Trees

"Everyone knew that holy spirits live in the Sembar tree. As night falls, its daytime visitors depart - bees, a bird, and two chameleons."

"The Night Life of Trees was conceived when Tara brought Gond artists down to Chennai to work with them; the Gond live in the northern state of Madhya Pradesh, 600 kilometres from the city of Bhopal. 'We noticed there was a tree in every story they told -- ask them to draw a person, they draw a person under a tree. Ask them for a river, they draw a river running past a tree. Ask them for a bird, and it's a bird sitting in a tree.' "
'The Night Life of Trees', Tara Books
Art: Bhajju Shyam, Durga Bai and Ram Singh Urveti.
Design: Gita Wolf and Rathna Ramanathan.

                                                                                                                                              

                        

Le cœur de l'œil noir

battu en neige
jusqu'au plomb de l'être

Collage papiers, plumes / Cadavre Exquis
réalisé avec Cerkita Zünd

Le vieux chêne

Miroslav Tichý

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miroslav_Tichý

Secret Life

by Artstudio Reynolds
Germany 2008

http://www.reynold-reynolds.com

Synopsis:
Secret Life is the first of the Secrets Trilogy; a cycle exploring the imperceptible conditions that frame life and is followed by Secret Machine (2009) and Six Easy Pieces (2010)


Secret Life portrays a woman trapped in an apartment with a life of its own. Transcending the narrative horizons of human desire, the film visits upon us a glimpse of a shared and sacred reality. A work that defies the ultimate metaphysical taboos of temporality by combining novel technique with intrepid philosophical vision; and daring to present that which is seldom, if ever, portrayed in any artistic medium.
Impossibilities are made possible through Reynolds’ signature aesthetic, a lens that can fill one with reverence for the mundane.
Have you ever wondered what time sees, experiences? Without mortal assumptions about time, the occupant of the apartment is no longer limited even to unique location, but here, seen through the eye of time, space itself is now become alive. Without the context of space and time, the woman’s mind collapses and neglects the organization of her experience, leaving her only with sensations. The viewer may ask: Is it her mind or is it time itself that creates the uncontrolled and uncontrollable environment? The work suggests that all living things are endowed with consciousness, meaning all living things have awareness. While the space increases in its activity, the woman becomes an ever more passive element in her world. She moves at a mechanical speed and her mind is like a clock whose hands pin the events of her life to the tapestry of time, all the while, the truth is transcendentally reflected in the mechanical eye of the camera. Her thoughts escape her and come to life, growing like the plants that inhabit the space around her: living, searching, feeling, breathing and dying.