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19 posts tagged hidden treasure
Peter Lippman: Paradise Parking
American-born, Paris-based photographer Peter Lippman explores a world of stationary cars overtaken by nature in his series entitled Paradise Parking. This personal project that was two years in the making captures abandoned cars from yesteryear that are overwhelmed by roots and leaves from its surrounding natural environment. The vehicles’ rusty, tarnished finish coupled with nature’s swarming shades of green and brown wrapping its extended limbs around the cars makes for an interestingly post-apocalyptic scene.
When I first came across this series, I thought it looked eerily similar to underwater shots of sunken ships. Like the aquatic vessels covered in algae, these land vehicles are ravaged with moss, decaying and decomposing into its surroundings. These images also stand as great evidence of past civilizations. It’s beautifully fascinating to see the old models of automobiles naturally buried in foliage over time. read more
Takashi Miike: The Bird People in China
A young Japanese salaryman is sent by his company to a remote Chinese village to evaluate precious Jade that is found there, but before he arrives meets the yakuza who was sent to tail him to protect his bosses interest in the company. When the men finally arrive their mission become sidetracked by their interest in a mysterious young village girl, her haunting English language song and the secret that makes men fly like birds.
A masterpiece, nothing less. read more
Saul Bass: Phase IV (1974)
Hands down one of the most unjustly neglected Sci-Fi flicks of the 70’s. Phase IV had a lot going for it: mysterious cosmic events, bizarre behavior of ants, alien-like constructions found in the desert… It was directed by Saul Bass, renowned title designer that worked with Alfred Hitchcock and Martin Scorsese (which it certainly shows in the film), starred well established actors Nigel Davenport and Michael Murphy, and the electronic soundtrack by Brian Gascoigne was a marvel by itself. read more or watch the trailer on youtube.
John Cassavetes in Johnny Staccato (1959 - 60)
Perhaps better known to the general public as an actor, John Cassavetes’ true artistic legacy derives from his work behind the camera; arguably, he was America’s first truly independent filmmaker, an iconoclastic maverick whose movies challenged the assumptions of the cinematic form. Obsessed with bringing to the screen the “small feelings” he believed that American society at large attempted to suppress, Cassavetes’ work emphasized his actors above all else, favoring character examination over traditional narrative storytelling to explore the realities of the human condition. A pioneer of self-financing and self-distribution, he led the way for filmmakers to break free of Hollywood control, perfecting an improvisational, cinéma vérité aesthetic all his own. read more
Roy Budd: ‘Main Theme - Carter Takes A Train’ (1971)
One of the most evocative opening pieces of film music I know, Roy Budd’s Main Theme from Get Carter melds small jazz group groove with atmospheric soundtrack ambience to great effect.
The composition creates a perfect sense of locomotion, the percussion driving on against the springy double bass and tabla. The almost glutinously reverbed harpsichord and then electric piano hold it all together.
It’s been covered by artists as diverse as The Human League and Stereolab but the original is just perfection. (I couldn’t have said it better ;-) !!!
Eva Besnyö, Self-Portrait, Berlin 1932
In 1930, when Eva Besnyö arrived in Berlin at the age of only twenty, a certificate of successful apprenticeship from a recognised Budapest photographic studio in her bag, she had made two momentous decisions already: to turn photography into her profession and to put fascist Hungary behind her forever.
Like her Hungarian colleagues Moholy-Nagy, Kepes and Munkacsi and – a little later – Capa, Besnyö experienced Berlin as a metropolis of deeply satisfying artistic experimentation and democratic ways of life. She had found work with the press photographer Dr. Peter Weller and roamed the city with her camera during the day, searching for motifs on construction sites, by Lake Wannsee, at the zoo or in the sports stadiums, and her photographs were published – albeit, as was customary at the time, under the name of the studio.
In 1932 Besnyö left Berlin because she felt threatened by National Socialism. She succeeded in further developing her career in Amsterdam, where she survived German occupation and became a much sought-after photo journalist after the war. read more
Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919):
Ferns & Tree Ferns from Art Forms in Nature
Ernst Haeckel was a German physician, biologist and nature philosopher devoting much time to traveling as a field naturalist and collecting specimens along the way. He is noted for his discovery of radiolarian, a type of amoeboid protozoa that produces intricate mineral skeletons found as plankton throughout the ocean. These oceanic organisms are reflected in diverse forms that are strikingly beautiful, almost like the snowflakes of the sea. Notably, he also coined the terms “phylum” and “ecology.”
In many ways, Art Forms in Nature (Kunstformen der Natur) was a synthesis of Haeckel’s work and his endless fascination with life forms on earth. Published as booklets with 10 illustrations each from 1899-1904, it is considered by many his greatest work. Like his contemporary, Karl Blossfeldt, who utilized photography to depict nature in a convergence of many disciplines, including scientific, creative & artistic, Haeckel brought together a vision of the zoological world that is full of symmetry and is vibrant & powerful. Between them they were seminal influences, not only in the Art Nouveau movement of the early 1900’s, but in the entire art world of the 20th century, bridging the world between nature and art.
Haeckel’s academic and literary output was enormous, and by the time he was 60, he had produced 42 works of over 13,000 pages, including numerous scientific memoirs. read more
Las Pozas: One Man’s Surrealist Xanadu
Las Pozas, Xilitla was the creation of Edward James, the eccentric English poet and artist, and patron of the Surrealist movement. Its origins date back to 1947 when Edward, living in semi exile in Mexico, acquired the coffee plantation near Xilitla, San Luis Potosi, - now known as Las Pozas - registering it in the name of his friend and guide Plutarco Gastelum, who would later become the foreman and overseer of all construction there. For the next ten years Edward used “Las Pozas” to plant orchids and as a home for exotic animals. After a unprecedented frost in 1962 destroyed many of the orchids, Edward started building the extraordinary sculpture garden we see today. The design of “Las Pozas” was inspired both by his orchids and the vegetation of the Huastecan jungle combined with architectural elements taken from the Surrealist movement he was so closely involved with.
In the 1960s and 1970s Edward dedicated more and more resources to his “Surrealist Xanadu”, spending millions of dollars and employing hundreds of masons, artisans, and local craftsmen. By the time James died in 1984, he had built 36 surrealist inspired concrete sculptures, spread out over more than 20 acres of lush tropical jungle. Over time “Las Pozas” become known to artists, writers, travelers and photographers interested in James and the Surreal movement. read more
My Friends by Emmanuel Bove (1923)
Emmanuel Bove’s first novel, My Friends, relates the story of Victor Baton, a wounded war veteran trying to reestablish his prewar lifestyle but avoid work. Living in a run-down boardinghouse, Baton spends his days searching working-class Paris for the modest comforts of warmth, cheap meals, and friendship, but he finds little. And despite his situation, Baton remains vain and unsympathetic, a Bovian antihero to the fullest. Bove himself called My Friends, published in France in 1923, a “novel of impoverished solitude.”
One highlight of the book is Baton’s encounter with Neveu, a friendless, depressed man who is collecting stones along the Seine. When Baton approaches to ask why Neveu is collecting stones, Neveu tells him that he is about to drown himself, and he needs ballast to drag him to the bottom of the river. Baton decides to help Neveu collect stones, and then he decides to throw himself into the river as well. By the time they’ve collected enough stones to do the job, Neveu and Baton have become friends, and they decide to go to a cafe instead of killing themselves; but Neveu takes advantage of Baton’s generosity, spends all of his money on wine and then disappears into a brothel with Baton’s last penny. Baton never sees him again. It is difficult to imagine from this description that the scene is funny, but it is.
This 50-year-old first novel is as buoyant as fresh bread. It is also sad, funny and engagingly written in short, sober sentences which seem to flow with the ease of everyday talk. Beneath this appearance, to be sure, lies the art which conceals art, for Emmanuel Bove’s style is thriftily pared down and his choice of detail cleverly persuasive. The surprise is not in learning that his books appealed in their time to Colette, Rainer Maria Rilke and Samuel Beckett, but rather that they should have sunk since then into near oblivion. read more
