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I'd like to say that the Red Line got lost, that it wasn't me
The trouble is that I am tired and in pain and still sick and not making it to things I had planned because of exhaustion and the same story of mine has been rejected twice in the same week and the combination makes me feel as always that I am of no use to anyone and merely boring people with whatever I care about; I am not saying this is an accurate reading of the facts, but I am saying I would really like not to wake up from nightmares into pain for a couple of nights, I think it could be fun.
I did rent and watch Fritz Lang's Clash by Night (1952) because of Alfred Hayes; I cannot in good conscience claim it for women in noir even though it was produced by Harriet Parsons because I don't think it is noir as opposed to an emotionally twisty romance-drama photographed by Nicholas Musuraca with his customary rich (and noir-defining) shadows, but I may try to write about it anyway. Barbara Stanwyck is complicated, bruised, and clever in ways that are usually not given to heroines, Robert Ryan makes a compelling bad romance, and the postwar Monterey setting is pure Cannery Row. Marilyn Monroe's supporting part was her first top billing and even if the script eventually falls out from under her character, she's wonderful. I wish Catholic interests had not prevailed upon Lang to delete the scenes of the Blessing of the Fleet.
I spent yesterday afternoon with my father at the MFA. It turns out that M. C. Escher looks very different in person than he does in the secondhand forms I've encountered my whole life long; his tessellations and impossible geometries are clever when reproduced on posters or placemats, but as lithographs or line drawings, textured and incredibly precise up close, they're beautiful. Metamorphosis II (1939–40) is huge when you see it on a wall. I still love best the moment when the red-tiled roofs of Atrani set one slender bridge out into the sea where rings widen around the foot of a rook, chess-squares darkening under the water as the world beyond the edges of the board fades away. I can't describe it without using the language of time and motion, transformation. This exhibition also made it clear to me what an influence Escher must have been on Chris Van Allsburg. There are images in that gallery that could have come straight from The Mysteries of Harris Burdick (1984). I was also struck by the work of Anselm Kiefer in the exhibit of German woodcuts: 70s into 80s, especially the worked-over photograph Siegfried Forgets Brünhilde (1975–80). I need to go back and spend more time in Daily Life in Ancient Greece.
The most useful things I did today were grocery shopping, cleaning the refrigerator, and establishing that I will be able to participate in a podcast tomorrow with the archaic computer I have, but those were pretty useful. Tomorrow I will be able to cook rather than just make a sandwich, also talk to people in other time zones and open the crisper without needing to reach for a flamethrower.
When I am less dead and more up for travel, I want to see the Jayne County retrospective at Participant Inc.
I did rent and watch Fritz Lang's Clash by Night (1952) because of Alfred Hayes; I cannot in good conscience claim it for women in noir even though it was produced by Harriet Parsons because I don't think it is noir as opposed to an emotionally twisty romance-drama photographed by Nicholas Musuraca with his customary rich (and noir-defining) shadows, but I may try to write about it anyway. Barbara Stanwyck is complicated, bruised, and clever in ways that are usually not given to heroines, Robert Ryan makes a compelling bad romance, and the postwar Monterey setting is pure Cannery Row. Marilyn Monroe's supporting part was her first top billing and even if the script eventually falls out from under her character, she's wonderful. I wish Catholic interests had not prevailed upon Lang to delete the scenes of the Blessing of the Fleet.
I spent yesterday afternoon with my father at the MFA. It turns out that M. C. Escher looks very different in person than he does in the secondhand forms I've encountered my whole life long; his tessellations and impossible geometries are clever when reproduced on posters or placemats, but as lithographs or line drawings, textured and incredibly precise up close, they're beautiful. Metamorphosis II (1939–40) is huge when you see it on a wall. I still love best the moment when the red-tiled roofs of Atrani set one slender bridge out into the sea where rings widen around the foot of a rook, chess-squares darkening under the water as the world beyond the edges of the board fades away. I can't describe it without using the language of time and motion, transformation. This exhibition also made it clear to me what an influence Escher must have been on Chris Van Allsburg. There are images in that gallery that could have come straight from The Mysteries of Harris Burdick (1984). I was also struck by the work of Anselm Kiefer in the exhibit of German woodcuts: 70s into 80s, especially the worked-over photograph Siegfried Forgets Brünhilde (1975–80). I need to go back and spend more time in Daily Life in Ancient Greece.
The most useful things I did today were grocery shopping, cleaning the refrigerator, and establishing that I will be able to participate in a podcast tomorrow with the archaic computer I have, but those were pretty useful. Tomorrow I will be able to cook rather than just make a sandwich, also talk to people in other time zones and open the crisper without needing to reach for a flamethrower.
When I am less dead and more up for travel, I want to see the Jayne County retrospective at Participant Inc.
no subject
Escher was the first artist I really imprinted on. Seeing that work up close must have been a trip. I'll see if I can find a copy of Harris Burdick.
Enjoy Jayne County when you can go!
no subject
Thank you.
*hugs*
Escher was the first artist I really imprinted on. Seeing that work up close must have been a trip.
Some of the pieces are much larger than I would have thought, some quite small, all minutely detailed. And way ahead of their time, which I had somehow never realized: he was making prints in the 1940's that look like psychedelica.
I'll see if I can find a copy of Harris Burdick.
If you have not read it, I think you'll really like it. The conceit is that each illustration comes from a different story, with only the title and a single caption to suggest what that story might be, but the cumulative effect is a Tarot-like shuffle through all sorts of different genres and moods and sometimes funny, sometimes disturbing, always weird images, like channel-surfing in the Twilight Zone. You're intended to make up your own stories while or after reading. (This has even resulted in professionally published stories—with Van Allsburg's permission, I assume, Stephen King famously included a Harris Burdick story in Nightmares and Dreamscapes.) I recently gave my niece a copy and I hope she's enjoying it.
Enjoy Jayne County when you can go!
Thank you! If the museum permits, I'll try to bring back pictures.