Monday, March 31, 2014

Jorge Luis Borges, After Going Blind, Draws a Self-Portrait [feedly]

  

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Jorge Luis Borges, After Going Blind, Draws a Self-Portrait
// Open Culture

borges self portrait blind

Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986), one of the great writers to come out of Argentina, went blind when he was  only 55 years old. As unsettling as it must have been, it wasn't particularly a surprise. He once told The New York Times, "I knew I would go blind, because my father, my paternal grandmother, my great-grandfather, they had all gone blind."

In the years following that life-changing moment, Borges never learned braille and could no longer read. But he did continue to write; he served as the director of Argentina's National Library; he traveled and delivered an important series of lectures at Harvard on poetry (click to listen); and he even took a stab at drawing — something he did fairly well earlier in life. (See our previous post: Two Drawings by Jorge Luis Borges Illustrate the Author's Obsessions.)

Above, you can see a self portrait that Borges drew in the basement of the famous Strand Bookstore in New York City. According to the Times, he did this "using one finger to guide the pen he was holding with his other hand." After making the sketch, Borges entered the main part of the bookstore and started "listening to the room, the stacks, the books," and made the remarkable observation "You have as many books as we have in our national library."

If you've ever been to The Strand, you know how many books it holds. Indeed, the store boasts of being "New York City's legendary home of 18 Miles of new, used and rare books." My guess is that Argentina's national library might have a few more volumes than that. But who is really counting?

Related Content:

Jorge Luis Borges' 1967-8 Norton Lectures On Poetry (And Everything Else Literary)

Borges: Profile of a Writer Presents the Life and Writings of Argentina's Favorite Son, Jorge Luis Borges

Jorge Luis Borges Chats with William F. Buckley on Firing Line (1977)

Jorge Luis Borges, After Going Blind, Draws a Self-Portrait is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooksFree Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.

The post Jorge Luis Borges, After Going Blind, Draws a Self-Portrait appeared first on Open Culture.


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Sunday, March 30, 2014

Elegant as ever [feedly]

  

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Elegant as ever
// Gustaf Tenggren

This image was published in November 29, 1956. The famous Saturday Evening Post Cover with Walt Disney had been published just a couple of weeks ago and the local Maine paper The Boothbay Register was making a visit by the artist. At the time his main scope was to meet the deadline for the 100 full color illustrations for Arabian Nights, that were to be delivered in December.

Gustaf Tenggren had just recently celebrated his 60 year birthday in November 3, 1956, when this picture was published.
He doesn't look too overwhelmed, being disturbed in his work.
This 60 year old gentleman is painting along in a nice suit and and tie. On the drawing board is one of the stunning pages illustrating a ferocious fight at sea. It all turned out to be one of his most beautiful books ever. Below is the remarkable original, kept in the vaults of Kerlan Collection in University of Minneapolis, Minnesota. 
Full page from Sindbad the Sailor, Margaret Seifer's compilation of Golden Tales from Arabian Nights
published by Simon & Schuster in 1957.
Kerlan collection of the University of Minnesota Libraries with permissions from the Archives and Special Collections.


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Bicycle Street Art by Mart [feedly]

  

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Bicycle Street Art by Mart
// Colossal

Bicycle Street Art by Mart street art murals bicycles

Bicycle Street Art by Mart street art murals bicycles

Bicycle Street Art by Mart street art murals bicycles

Bicycle Street Art by Mart street art murals bicycles

Bicycle Street Art by Mart street art murals bicycles

Bicycle Street Art by Mart street art murals bicycles

Bicycle Street Art by Mart street art murals bicycles

Bicycle Street Art by Mart street art murals bicycles

Bicycle Street Art by Mart street art murals bicycles

Bicycle Street Art by Mart street art murals bicycles

I'm completely in love with these bicycle murals from Argentinian artist Mart who began painting on the streets of Buenos Aires in the 1990s at the tender age of 12. His whimsical imagination is expressed through vibrant colors and stunning line work that flows freely from cans of spray paint. You can see much more of his work on Flickr, and read more about him over on Graffitimundo.


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Saturday, March 29, 2014

Melodic Incidents of the Irrational World [feedly]

  

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Melodic Incidents of the Irrational World
// 50 Watts

Works by Leopoldo Méndez (circa 1927–1947) 1944, "The Great Reception" cover for Incidentes Melodicos del Mundo Irracional (Melodic Incidents of the Irrational World) (I replaced my scan with the Guggenheim's scan) These images come from two books: Mexico Ilustrado 1920-1950 (in Spanish though a harder-to-find English edition exists) and Mexico and Modern Printmaking: A Revolution in the Graphic Arts, 1920-1950. They are both pretty incredible books with not too much overlap. From wikipedia:Leopoldo Méndez (June 30, 1902 – February 8, 1969) was one of Mexico's most important graphics artists and one of the country's most important artists from the 20th century. Méndez's work mostly focused on engraving for illustrations and other print work generally connected to his political and social activism. His most influential work was connected to organizations such as the Liga de Escritores y Artistas Revolucionarios and the Taller de Gráfica Popular creating propaganda related to the ideals of the Mexican Revolution and against the rise of Fascism in the 1930s. Despite his importance in 20th-century artistic and political circles, Méndez was a relatively obscure figure during his life, and remains so afterwards. The reasons for this generally relate to the fact that he believed in working collaboratively and anonymously for the good of society rather than for monetary gain and because the socialist and communist themes of his work fell out of favor with later generations. Despite this, he has received some posthumous recognition with Mexican scholarship considering him to be the successor to graphics artist José Guadalupe Posada. [cont. reading] 1944, from Incidentes Melodicos del Mundo Irracional "Much as Posada used the calavera, Méndez was able to make political statements by substituting anthropomorphic animals for human subjects in his wood engravings for Juan de la Cabada's book Incidentes Melodicos del Mundo Irracional, published in 1944 by La Estampa Mexicana. In this retelling of a traditional Mayan story Méndez rendered the deceitful leader of the Yucatan animal community as a vulture wearing the white-collar uniform of the bourgeois businessman. When the other animals rise up against the vulture, the story becomes an unmistakable allegory for a Marxist revolution in which the proletariat replaces the bourgeoisie as the ruling class."—James M. Wechsler, "Propaganda Grafica" essay from Mexico and Modern Printmaking You can see the full book at Full Table. 1944, from Incidentes Melodicos del Mundo Irracional 1944, from Incidentes Melodicos del Mundo Irracional 1932, "God and the Four Evangelists (Fool's Concert)," wood engraving Features caricatures of Dr. Atl, Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and education secretary Moises Saenz. 1934, The Accident 1942 1947, cover for Anthropos 1931 1932 cover 1935, cover for a novel, attributed to Mendez 1931, cover for a novel, attributed to Mendez Futuro magazine cover, November 1940 1928, A Fragment of the Revolution cover 1928, A Fragment of the Revolution cover 1927 cover 1938, "Imperialism and War," lithograph flyer 1945, "What May Happen (Self-Portrait)," wood engraving 1942, "Corrido of Stalingrad," linocut 1948 linocut, "I'm Thirsty" accompanied a film titled Rio Escondido (apparently prints like this were projected before the movie...would be interesting to see it blown up that large) 1932, "Proletarian Hand," wood engraving This post first appeared on March 18, 2014 on 50 Watts
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It Can Kill Creativity [feedly]

  

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It Can Kill Creativity
// The Artist's Life

Second only to language in the hierarchy of advanced survival skills must be the ability to imagine something that does not yet exist, and then make that dream into something solid and real. Just look around you as you read this, and try to find something in your house or office that at one time was not just a dream in somebody's head. Barring plants, minerals and those things of the earth itself, everything around us is the product of a creative imagination at work.

Starry Night by Vincent Van Gogh, oil painting, 1889.
Starry Night by Vincent Van Gogh, oil painting, 1889.
This ability is apparently blown into all of us at birth, is sometimes called abstract reasoning outside of the art field, but nevertheless it is the same thing. Businesses could not survive without it and everyone probably engages in small acts of creativity every day without being aware of it. It is a skill that can be used as a force for good or for evil with equal efficiency, but history suggests that the positive use of creativity is the natural order of things.

We are born dreamers, and we have the power to direct our dreams to create a world to our liking. Throughout history, for good or bad, the most successful people have always been those individuals who realized this power and used it fearlessly to create a new world that never existed before. The late Steve Jobs is but one example of the contemporary dreamers who used this ability to turn their private dreams into a world-changing reality. He did this even when those around him often claimed the task was impossible.

So it is with artists, oil painting artists, draftsmen, and creative people of all stripes. Creating something that never existed before, even if it is only within our own personal world, is our job description. It is our reason for being and we believe that by sharing our efforts publicly, we serve the greater good, despite cultural and economic signals to the contrary. Economic support for what we do is useful, but not a measure of the value of our ideas.

Historically, culture often lags behind the ideas and efforts of the artistic community. How could it not? Ideas move at two hundred miles an hour across the synapses of the brain, and giving physical form to our ideas need not take long. The key for all of us is to keep dreaming and imagining and believing in our vision, no matter what. We are the privileged ones, whose daring role it is to look at the disparate parts of the world and "connect the dots" into a new creation. This takes some courage, and discipline.

Fear is the enemy, and fear is the only force that can limit, and sometimes kill, creativity. We cannot allow fears of criticism or failure or economic losses to enter our studios and interfere with our creativity. We must carve out a sacred space or time within which we can be temporarily free of these fears and concerns, so that our imagination can be free to wander and dream. We have found meditation to be a powerful tool for sweeping the mental clutter into the corner so that we can walk around in our imaginations. Our art has improved because of this discipline. It is always the first 30 minutes of any day for us.

What about you? How do you get centered and sweep away the mental clutter? Leave a comment and let us know.

Please join us on The Artist's Road for more interesting, informative and in-depth articles.                                                             

--John and Ann


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Artist Of The Day - Gertrude Greene [feedly]



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