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American Author and Illustrator Maurice Sendak Dies (1928-2012)

“Where the Wild Things Are” (copyright page) by Maurice Sendak, Harper Trophy edition (1963)1984, 25th Anniversary Edition. © Maurice Sendak.

☛ Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak, Harper Trophy edition [1963]1984, 25th Anniversary Edition, copyright page. © Maurice Sendak.

From The New York Times:

Maurice Sendak, widely considered the most important children’s book artist of the 20th century, who wrenched the picture book out of the safe, sanitized world of the nursery and plunged it into the dark, terrifying and hauntingly beautiful recesses of the human psyche, died on Tuesday in Danbury, Conn. He was 83 and lived in Ridgefield, Conn.[…]

Roundly praised, intermittently censored and occasionally eaten, Mr. Sendak’s books were essential ingredients of childhood for the generation born after 1960 or thereabouts, and in turn for their children. He was known in particular for more than a dozen picture books he wrote and illustrated himself, most famously “Where the Wild Things Are,” which was simultaneously genre-breaking and career-making when it was published by Harper & Row in 1963. (“Maurice Sendak, Author of Splendid Nightmares, Dies at 83” by Margalit Fox, May 8, 2012)

Maurice Sendak photographed by Joyce Dopkeen for The New York Times, 2006. © Joyce Dopkeen/The New York Times

“Maurice Sendak at his Ridgefield, Conn., home with his German Shepherd, Herman, in 2006.” (photo Joyce Dopkeen/The New York Times)

Here’s how The New York Times concludes its article on Sendak:

Though he understood children deeply, Mr. Sendak by no means valorized them unconditionally. “Dear Mr. Sun Deck …” he could drone with affected boredom, imitating the semiliterate forced-march school letter-writing projects of which he was the frequent, if dubious, beneficiary.

But he cherished the letters that individual children sent him unbidden, which burst with the sparks that his work had ignited.

“Dear Mr. Sendak,” read one, from an 8-year-old boy. “How much does it cost to get to where the wild things are? If it is not expensive, my sister and I would like to spend the summer there.”

“Where the Wild Things Are” (pp. 31-32) by Maurice Sendak, Harper Trophy edition (1963)1984, 25th Anniversary Edition. © Maurice Sendak.

“Where the Wild Things Are” (pp. 31-32) by Maurice Sendak, Harper Trophy edition (1963)1984, 25th Anniversary Edition. © Maurice Sendak.

For more about Maurice Sendak see:

• By on May 8, 2012 ― Published in , | Tagged: , , , , , , ,

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Falling Down by Joel Schumacher, 1993

I’ve passed the point of no return. Do you know what that is, Beth? That’s the point in a journey where it’s longer to go back to the beginning. It’s like when those astronauts got in trouble. I don’t know, somebody messed up, and they had to get them back to Earth. But they had passed the point of no return. They were on the other side of the moon and were out of contact for like hours. Everybody waited to see if a bunch of dead guys in a can would pop out the other side. Well, that’s me. I’m on the other side of the moon now and everybody is going to have to wait until I pop out.

☛ Falling Down by Joel Schumacher, United States, 1993, IMDb.

Falling Down\'s poster

• • •

Previously: Iron Maiden: Man On The Edge

• By on July 4, 2008 ― Published in , | Tagged: , , , , , , , ,

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Jean-Luc Nancy on the risk and value of love

Love opens onto a very great risk, but this risk is the measure of the incredible value we place on another per­son. We make him or her this valuable because we need to do so, because we receive something in return. Love tells us that things are never quite right with us when we’re alone. We’re not made to be alone, just as we’re also not made to be in large groups. This doesn’t mean that everything is automatically fine when we’re with another person. But when we are with him or her, we know that “something’s going on,” as they say. We are made to be in relation with another person, one with whom “some­thing’s going on”-something that’s never definable but that’s a real relation, in the strong sense of the word. I’m not saying that we are all, or always, made to spend our entire lives with one and the same person. It’s true, though, that love does say this “love ever after.” We do promise to love each other forever, but then sometimes it’s all over three days later. But that’s part of the risk of this absolute commitment.

☛ God, Justice, Love, Beauty by Jean-Luc Nancy, tr. by Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael Naas, Fordham University Press, [2009] 2001, p. 76

This is a transcription of a talk given by Jean-Luc Nancy at Montreuil’s Center for the Dramatic Arts as part of a series titled “Little Dialogues.” (Petites Conférences). The talk was given in front of children aged between six and twelve years old. It is part of a series of talks about various topic which includes, as the title of the collection suggests, “God”, “Justice” and “Beauty”.

This particular talk on the theme of “Love” took place in Montreuil, on February 2, 2008. One can read a detailed review of the entire collection at the Canadian Society for Continental Philosophy: “Jean-Luc Nancy, God, Justice, Love, Beauty” by Jason Harman, Aug. 1, 2011. The talk on love was published in French in 2008 as Je t’aime un peu, beaucoup, passionnément. Petite conférence sur l’amour (Paris: Bayard).

In the passage I’m quoting here, Jean-Luc Nancy is discussing the rhyme “I love you a little, a lot, passionately, madly, not at all.” It continues as follows:

Let’s now move on to the last two parts of the rhyme, “madly, not at all.” In fact, we’ve already entered into the issue of “madly.” There is a sort of madness in the risk, the engagement, in the very act of cherishing, of giving to the other person and of receiving from the other person a value beyond all value. We depart from all that is reasonable in terms of relations between people: we are engaged with each other more than we could be in any other rela­tion. We open up to each other, move toward each other, and expose ourselves to a great deal, so it is very difficult to know at what point the other person might be asking too much. Am I right to feel that he or she is asking too much of me, or is the problem with me not knowing how to go far enough? This is an extremely delicate issue, dan­gerous and difficult. Such a powerful and unique relation between two people is very difficult. Each of them is risk­ing a lot because they must both break from their sense of self-satisfaction and from their self-containment, from what is called “narcissism.“

My calm is endangered when I’m in love, for love doesn’t make you calm. But when a bracing disquiet tips over into a tormented one, it can’t go on any longer. At the extreme, it’s even possible for two people to destroy each other. The dream of lovers in all great love stories is of dying together, like Romeo and Juliet. Very often, old couples who have lived together for their entire lives expe­rience the desire to die together. It is very difficult for these old couples to imagine one of them surviving the other and continuing alone in life. The idea of dying together sug­gests that death may be the only way of completely being together, whereas, by contrast, there is nothing more alive than love.

But there is also a sort of madness when love asks too much. Love is thrilling, and it can make you want to do anything. But in the end it can also ask too much of the other person and of yourself. It is a kind of madness, but all the same, it is a madness that shows its real worth, a worth beyond measure. Love demands a total freedom and a total devotion from the other person. Let’s face it: in a very real sense, the demand of love is a contradictory one.

In the game of the daisy, we always hope to land on “madly.” “Passionately” is already not too bad. Right after “madly,” though, you land on “not at all,” because it can all come to a halt or fall flat for no reason, just as it began. But that doesn’t mean you have to give it all up after the first minor disagreement. If you do that, it wasn’t love. But if the disagreement is greater and goes on for a while, it could be that it is both necessary and proper to break things off. The “not at all” of the rhyme means that love, even the truest love, can always be lost. It is never guaran­teed. If a love were guaranteed, it would not be love. (pp. 76-78)

• By on August 11, 2014 ― Published in | Tagged: , , , , , , , , ,

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Gerard Schlosser’s Paintings

"Tu avais quel âge quand tu es parti?" by Gerard Schlosser, 1978

☛ artnet.com: “Tu avais quel âge quand tu es parti” by Gerard Schlosser, acrylic on sanded canvas, 59.1″x59.1″, 1978

Gerard Schlosser is a French painter born in 1931. He’s known for painting hyperrealist fragments of fictional stories. He uses photographs to frame a specific part of a scene: woman’s legs crossed while she’s sitting on a chair, half the back of a man leaning forward, a single breasts partly exposed, trunks of man and woman embracing each other, etc. He currently lives and works in Paris.

There’s virtually no information in English about him on the Internet. Here’s what I was able to found:

  • Galerie Laurent Strouk website displays nine paintings (medium size). Its Flickr photostream has two hi-res reproduction of Schlosser paintings (1000px).

  • In French, Contempart has 13 medium reproduction of various paintings, as well as a short biography and analysis.

  • artnet.com has three more paintings by Schlosser (medium size).

  • In French, a short article on Wikipedia with a list of Schlosser’s recent exhibitions.

  • Galerie Marie Ricco has a reproduction of “Mais c’est le jour” (1977). It’s a good size reproduction but the quality is poor.

  • Le Cercle d’Art is hosting a short documentary (in French) about Schlosser: “Conversation avec Gerard Schlosser” by Philippe Monsel, 2009 (23 minutes). Flash is required to watch the video (follow the link and click on “Film Gérard Schlosser”). At the very beginning of the video, we see him sanding his canvas (applying glue and fine sand on its surface).

  • Alain Jouffroy wrote a book on Gerard Schlosser: Gerard Schlosser, Frédéric Loeb editors, Paris, 1993. It seems to be really hard to find. The two copies available on AbeBooks are sold nearly 400US$ each. Excerpt:

    • Schlosser est une caméra-œil, la caméra-œil d’un peintre-cinéaste, et pas seulement un œil. Mais cette caméra-œil – et cet œil – sont, comme ceux d’un cinéaste, indissolublement liés aux emplois du temps, aux emplois d’espaces d’une société.

• By on May 16, 2011 ― Published in , | Tagged: , , , , , , , ,

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Barnaby Barford: “Stick that on YouTube!”, 2007

“Stick that on YouTube!” from the Private Lives; series, bone china, porcelain, earthware, enamel paint, other media, H 27 cm x diameter 29 cm, 2007. Image credit: Theo Cook. © Barnaby Barford

☛ Barnaby Barford: “Stick that on YouTube!” from the Private Lives series, bone china, porcelain, earthware, enamel paint, other media, H 27 cm x diameter 29 cm, 2007. Image credit: Theo Cook. © Barnaby Barford.

I wrote about Barnaby Barford’s art before (Barnaby Barford: “The Good The Bad The Belle”, 2009). He is currently having his first solo exhibition in United States at the Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art (Virginia Beach, VA). The exhibition has been running since September 12 and will continue up until December 29, 2013.

“Mary had a little lamb” by Barnaby Barford, from the ‘Private Lives’ series, bone china, porcelain, metal, enamel paint, H 27 cm x diameter 29 cm, 2007. © Barnaby Barford.

“Mary had a little lamb” by Barnaby Barford, from the ‘Private Lives’ series, bone china, porcelain, metal, enamel paint, H 27 cm x diameter 29 cm, 2007. © Barnaby Barford.

Here’s how Alison Byrne, director of exhibitions and education at the Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), describe Barford’s art:

Part artist, storyteller and casting director, Barnaby Barford works with antique and mass-produced figurines. He dissects, combines, reassembles, and paints them to create narrative sculpture with darkly comic titles and a touch of English humor.

By incorporating kitsch figurines that we might expect to find on our grandmothers’ shelves into contemporary and sometimes scandalous scenarios, the artist takes us off-guard. At first glance these pieces might look harmless, but when you get up close and notice that a cherub-like boy figurine has been altered into a mischievous weapon-wielding character wearing a hoodie, jeans and Nike sneakers, you can’t help but laugh. It’s been wonderful hearing our visitors chuckling out loud when they see these tongue-in-cheek sculptures. (British Council: “How a young UK artist came to exhibit in Virginia” by Alyson Byrne, October 11, 2013).

The exhibition features 28 sculptures from 14 collections dispersed around the world. It also has Barnaby’s first animated film, Damaged Goods (2008, Vimeo):

The film marks Artist Barnaby Barford’s first venture into animated film, creating a new world for his porcelain characters. “I’ve always seen my pieces as scenes from a film – I want viewers to make up what happened before and what might happen afterwards – so it felt like a natural progression to work on a film,” Barford explains. (Barnaby Barford: “Damaged Good Film”)

One can also watch the 5-min profile “Porcelain Artist Barnaby Barford” produced by Deutsche Welle back in April 2013 for its Euromaxx series:

• By on December 16, 2013 ― Published in | Tagged: , , , , , , ,

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Living Together: “Bored Couples” by Martin Parr, 1993

From the series Bored Couples: "FINLAND. Ferry between Helsinki and Stokholm", by Martin Parr, 1991

☛ Martin Parr (Flash is required): “FINLAND. Ferry between Helsinki and Stokholm. 1991” from the series Bored Couples (22 colour images, unpaged), published by Galerie du Jour Agnès B., Paris, 1993. © Martin Parr, 2011

[Although I refer to Martin Parr’s official website where one can browse a preview of his book, the source for the photograph posted above (without watermarks) is the Galerie Paris-Beijing website]

Artist’s statement from the Magnum Photos website:

This series of photographs were taken as an opportunity to explore the veracity of the caption.

We do not know if these random couples are bored or not. Who is to say what is authentic when captioned as thus?

Parr also photographs himself with his partner appearing to be bored, but she is, in fact, very excited at the addition of this photo to the project.

I was reminded of Martin Parr’s series Bored Couples recently while reading Hannah Arendt’s observations in her book The Human Condition about what it means to “live together”. Those observations seem to contradict the utopian (and possibly naive) idea of a “world without boundaries”:

To live together in the world means essentially that a world of things is between those who have it in common, as a table is located between those who sit around it; the world, like every in-between, relates and separates men at the same time. (The Human Condition, Second Edition, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1958, p. 52)

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More about Martin Parr online:

  • One can browse (and even better subscribe) to Martin Parr’s personal blog.
  • “Ruthless Courtesies: The Making of Martin Parr” in The Pleasures of Good Photographs by Gerry Badger, published by the Aperture Foundation, 2010. PDF retrieved from Multistory.co.uk
  • From the collective Re: “Boundaries Merely Exist in People’s Minds” an interview with Martin Parr by Maarten Dings and Joachim Naudts (PDF), November 25, 2007

• By on July 20, 2011 ― Published in , , | Tagged: , , , , ,

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The Domestication of Being by Peter Sloterdijk

Here, the concept of objective spirit turns into the principle of information. This steps between thoughts and things as a third value, between the pole of reflection and the pole of the thing, between spirit and matter. Intelligent machines -like all artifices that are culturally created- eventually also compel thought to recognize on a broader front the fact of the matter that here, quite obviously, “spirit” or reflection or thought is infused into matter and remains there ready to be re-found and further cultivated. Machines and artifices are thus real-existing negations of the conditions before the imprinting of the in-formatio into the medium. They are in this sense memories or reflections turned objective. In order to conceive of this, one needs an ontology that is at least bivalent as well as a trivalent logic, which is to say a cognitive toolkit capable of articulating that there are real-existing affirmed negations and negated affirmations, that there are nothings in a state of being, and beings in a state of nothingness. In the end, the statement, “there is information,” says nothing else. It is to make this statement possible and to consolidate it that Hegel and Heidegger engage in an intellectual battle of giants – a battle into which authors such as Günther, Deleuze, Derrida and Luhmann have entered with considerable effect. They all work to conquer the tertium datur.

☛ Die Domestikation des Seins. Für eine Verdeutlichung der Lichtung by Peter Sloterdijk, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main, 2000; trans. of the fourth chapter as “The Operable Man” by Joel Westerdale and Günter Sautter (slightly modified).

• • •

The excerpt quoted above comes from a translation of the fourth and final chapter of the essay. For a while this English translation was hosted both at the Goethe Institute website and at Peter Sloterdijk official website. Those links no longer work, but the text can be access using the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine here and here. There are slight differences between the French and English translations (in the English version, a part of a sentence is missing, a quote by Heidegger is shorten). At the time of writing, a complete English translation of the whole essay still doesn’t exist.

I don’t know if Die Domestikation des Seins was ever published as a standalone text before being included in the volume Nicht gerettet: Versuche nach Heidegger (Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main, 2001). Some online bibliographies seem to suggest it did, but I could not find trace of a standalone edition at Suhrkamp.

The essay was translated in French by Olivier Mannoni as La domestication de l’être and published by Mille et une nuits on September 2000. This edition –which front cover is reminiscent of the Star Gate sequence in Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey– has been out of print for many years. In November of 2010, the same French translation was re-published in a volume that also includes Règles pour le parc humain (Paris: Fayard/Mille et une nuits). For more information about the French translation of Regeln für den Menschenpark, see previously here. It is worth keeping in mind the Regeln… essay was produced before Die Domestikation….

A first draft of the French translation by Olivier Mannoni was presented by Peter Sloterdijk at the symposium “Cloner or not cloner” held by the Pompidou Center on March 28 to 30, 2000. Sloterdijk presentation was then titled “Clairière turbulente. Pour une réminiscence de l’anthropologie philosophique”. A partial audio recording of his participation is available online, both at the Pompidou Center website and on YouTube). The 55-min recording ends abruptly in the midst of what is equivalent to the third chapter of La domestication de l’être, just before the presentation of the four anthropogenic mechanisms (page 45 in the first Mille et une nuit edition). Those 55 minutes still represent half of Sloterdijk’s essay.

At his blog Progressive Geography, Stuart Elden shares some useful information about the works by Peter Sloterdijk that are currently available in English, while also proposing reading suggestions for those less familiar with his prolific production: see “Where to start with reading Peter Sloterdijk?”. Elden also links to Sean Sturm’s bibliography of texts by Sloterdijk already translated into English: “Peter Sloterdijk in English”. I have linked to Sturm’s blog back in 2011, but the bibliography is being regularly updated: the last update was made in July 2013.

Like many others, I first came in contact with the work of Peter Sloterdijk in 2000, through the French translation of both Regeln für den Menschenpark and Die Domestikation des Seins.

Previous works by Sloterdijk had already received international acclaimed. His Critique of Cynical Reason (Kritik der zynischen Vernunft) was hailed both by Michel Foucault and Jürgen Habermas when it first appeared in 1983. However, one could safely say that the major controversy surrounding the publication Regeln für den Menschenpark in 1999 introduced Sloterdijk to a much broader audience, outside the national circle of German philosophy. At its center, this controversy was concerned with Sloterdijk’s critique of humanism formulated through the theme of “domestikation”. This theme would be further developed in the essay Die Domestikation des Seins.

Therein lies the critical importance of those two short, but dense essays. Controversy aside, I believe they also provide an excellent introduction to Sloterdijk’s major ideas, especially in regard to media theory (Regeln), and to his theory of space (Die Domestikation).

For a good introduction, in French, to the the Habermas-Sloterdijk-controversy, see Alexandre Dupeyrix: “La controverse entre Jürgen Habermas et Peter Sloterdijk” (2005). Sloterdijk commented it in an “Afterword” he wrote for the French edition of Regeln für den Menschenpark (this afterword is not included in the English translation of “Rules for the Human Zoo”). He also talked about it during an interview with Éric Alliez published in the very first issue of Multitude, in March 2000: “Vivre chaud et penser froid”.

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Previously:

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Front cover for the first French edition of ‘La domestication de l'être’ by Peter Sloterdijk (Paris: Mille et une nuits, 2000)

Front cover for the first French edition of ‘La domestication de l’être’ by Peter Sloterdijk (Paris: Mille et une nuits, 2000)

• By on April 16, 2014 ― Published in , | Tagged: , , , , ,

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Henri Michaux’s Tent Posts: “Communicate?” (1981)

Communicate? You too would like to communicate? Communicate what? your backfill?―the same mistake again and again. All of your backfill heaped on itself?

You’re not yet intimate enough with you, poor fool, to have something to communicate.

Tent Posts by Henri Michaux, tr. by Lynn Hoggard, Los Angeles: Green Integer, [1981]1997, p. 97.

Here’s the original French version, first published as Poteaux d’angle (Paris: Gallimard, 1981):

Communiquer? Toi aussi tu voudrais communiquer? Communiquer quoi? tes remblais?―la même erreur toujours. Vos remblais les uns les autres?

Tu n’es pas encore assez intime avec toi, malheureux, pour avoir à communiquer.

• By on June 27, 2012 ― Published in , , | Tagged: , , , ,

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Sandra Rivi – Loneliness

Most of the photographs presented in my site are about loneliness and inwardness: it’s all about these moments when loneliness, silence and thoughts going round in circles are so extended and high that it seems that the objects themselves begin to reflect your own thoughts, and that they gain intensity, while yourself are blending in your surroundings. [More…]

» Via Mrs. Dean’s blog

• By on November 23, 2008 ― Published in , | Tagged: , , , , , ,

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Burroughs and his Jack-o’-lantern, by Philip Heying

[UPDATE] Oct. 30, 2017–The photography was removed at the request of Philip Heying.

☛ Burroughs 100: “William Burroughs with a Jack-O-Lantern he carved with a hatchet, October 31, 1996” Photo © Philip Heying. All Rights reserved.

Photographer Philip Heying took this photo on October 31st, 1996. Heying, who knew Burroughs since the 1980s, was interviewed in 2013 by Tom King for Burroughs 100, the official website of Burroughs Centenary. Tom King is a writer and the caretaker at the William Burroughs House. In the interview, Heying tells him the context in which the photo was taken:

I came for an early dinner on Halloween with Bernard and Francoise Heidsieck. There was a traditional spooky face carved on the pumpkin on the other side of the porch, but William’s hatchet job was really horrifying. It was the most intense jack-o-lantern I had ever seen so I asked William to pose beside it. You can tell by how the pockets of his jacket are sagging that he was carrying several weapons. He really was a dangerous guy.

Allen was visiting. He and William had decked out the front room for the trick-or-treaters. Jose Ferez-Kuri [Burroughs’ art dealer] had brought a dozen huge candy skulls from Mexico and William and Allen had set up a display of the skulls, just inside the front door, and all kinds of candy on the table. We had a nice dinner but no trick-or-treaters. At 7pm, past prime kid time, William was pacing. He was depressed that no-one showed up.

Around 7:15, they started coming. About 10 kids rang the bell, greeted by William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg. You can see part of Allen in the picture, in the doorway. A couple of kids were dressed like Bob Dole. William spoiled all those kids rotten: showered them with candy, doted on them, posed for pictures… He was the model–if heavily armed–neighbor. Those kids went away with life-sized, mystical candy skulls in their bags, given to them by William S. Burroughs. (“Mystical Dandy Skull: Interview with photographer Philip Heying” by Tom King October 18, 2013).

One can read more about Burrough’s house where the photo was taken in an essay Tom King wrote about it during the Winter of 2014: “The View From Burroughs’ House. A caretaker’s view of the William S. Burroughs centenary in Lawrence, Kansas.”

Philip Heying currently lives in Lawrence, Kansas. He teaches at Johnson County Community College in Overland Park, Kansas, and continues to work on photo projects. Here’s how he tells the story of his relationship with Burroughs:

During his college days in Lawrence, he was introduced to William S. Burroughs and embarked on a friendship which lasted until Burroughsʼs death in 1997. Welcomed into his circle of friends–including such people as Albert Hoffman, Allen Ginsberg, Brion Gysin and Timothy Leary–he found himself the beneficiary of singular artistic insight and guidance. Burroughs showed him how art could effect real change, how it could influence human perception and cultural patterns. (Bio)

• • •

Previously:

• By on October 31, 2015 ― Published in , | Tagged: ,

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