Showing posts with label Marcel Duchamp. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Marcel Duchamp. Show all posts
Clothed men and naked women...
...is a classic (some might argue puerile) male erotic fantasy.Three of my favourites...
Manet's masterpiece, the female figure in the foreground a combination of Victorine Meurent's face and Manet's wife Suzanne Leenhoff's body. But it is not the nudity that interests us here, but Manet's genius, not only as a painter, but in his capacity in his great works to engage and involve the audience. Emile Zola said "Painters, especially Édouard Manet, who is an analytic painter, do not have this preoccupation with the subject which torments the crowd above all; the subject, for them, is merely a pretext to paint, while for the crowd, the subject alone exists."
Well, we can allow the sublime Marcel his little jokes as he sits in front of The Large Glass contemplating his next move. After all, he considered most of his art an "amusement". For an analysis of his chess ability see Jennifer Shahade, who is a two time US chess champion. Jennifer has also turned the tables on Duchamp with her own video of her playing a naked male opponent while commenting on aspects of Duchamp's game. She said of the video "I guess being naked, cold and in a doomed chess position took away some of his natural cheer." The video can be found on the same page...
Arguably one of the most mysterious and therefore erotic photographs ever taken. All we know about it is that Riegler was Breitenbach's best friend and a journalist. There are several other pics from the same session if you feel like searching. What, you're leaving already?
Edouard Manet, Le déjeuner sur l'herbe ("Luncheon on the Grass"), 1862-63, Musee d'Orsay, Paris
Manet's masterpiece, the female figure in the foreground a combination of Victorine Meurent's face and Manet's wife Suzanne Leenhoff's body. But it is not the nudity that interests us here, but Manet's genius, not only as a painter, but in his capacity in his great works to engage and involve the audience. Emile Zola said "Painters, especially Édouard Manet, who is an analytic painter, do not have this preoccupation with the subject which torments the crowd above all; the subject, for them, is merely a pretext to paint, while for the crowd, the subject alone exists."
Julian
Wasser, Marcel Duchamp and Eve Babitz at his retrospective at the Pasadena Museum of
Art, 1963, Photograph
Well, we can allow the sublime Marcel his little jokes as he sits in front of The Large Glass contemplating his next move. After all, he considered most of his art an "amusement". For an analysis of his chess ability see Jennifer Shahade, who is a two time US chess champion. Jennifer has also turned the tables on Duchamp with her own video of her playing a naked male opponent while commenting on aspects of Duchamp's game. She said of the video "I guess being naked, cold and in a doomed chess position took away some of his natural cheer." The video can be found on the same page...
Josef Breitenbach, Dr. Riegler and J. Greno, Munich, 1933, Photograph
Arguably one of the most mysterious and therefore erotic photographs ever taken. All we know about it is that Riegler was Breitenbach's best friend and a journalist. There are several other pics from the same session if you feel like searching. What, you're leaving already?
Ambient addendum
The man across the road obsessively uses his petrol driven blower to remove leaves from the concrete slab in front of his house. A neighbour shatters the afternoon peace on his ride on mower. He mows every Thursday afternoon regardless of whether the lawn needs it or not. Wattlebirds squawk as they aggressively chase a spinebill through the garden. Up the back kids laugh and squeal on the new trampoline they got from Santa. The breaking surf can be heard in the distance. My computer gently drones away in the background. This the soundtrack to our lives...
I was thinking about these things yesterday while listening to, and penning the post on, emptywhale's latest release 'That Grey Place We Go'. I marvel at their ability to create these works of art, to develop the structures and moments that have the capacity to take you unexpected places and thought patterns that seem to emerge from nowhere. I wonder for a moment about the technical aspects of who using what can make these sounds, then decide it doesn't matter how, all that matters is now...
I am a relative 'newbie' when it comes to the ambient genre, although accepting I have probably listened inadvertently to 'ambient' music in the past without realising it. And what is ambient, or any classification of music anyway? My first love has always been jazz...but who can define what that means anymore? And, shock horror, I have even been listening to some classical sounds lately! And in cyberspace threads start to appear...
I had accidentally come across Erik Satie on UbuWeb in the same way as I had with emptywhale on The Internet Archives, and had used music from both as sound tracks to some recent video work. It turns out that Satie is considered a precursor of ambient music. He also wrote the music for Rene Clair's 1924 dadaist film 'Entr'acte'. The film was scripted by one of my main influences Francis Picabia, and starred, among others, Marcel Duchamp whose 1957 talk 'The Creative Act' I had used as soundtrack for another video, a video that was greatly influenced, at least visually, by Brian Eno, the father of ambient music.
In recent discussion with emptywhale about possible collaboration Chris had followed his own path in finding out more about Herbie Hancock, whose 'Funk Hunter' I had rather lazily used in another video, but had never been happy with, wanting a more menacing effect. He had come across, and really liked, a 1974 Miles Davis track called 'He Loved Him Madly' written as a tribute to Duke Ellington. It turns out that it was a major influence on Brian Eno.
And so on it goes...I am a HUGE Miles Davis fan, never tiring of listening to his music, and drawing constant inspiration from his adoption of change as part of the creative process. His capacity to always push ahead, try new things, and yet remain true to his discipline propels me to write this post, not for you dear reader if you have ventured this far, but as a reminder to myself to build on the new directions in my work that developed through 2012. I will always have a soft spot for eros and thanatos, but in 2013 my hand reaches out for the handle of a new door...
I was thinking about these things yesterday while listening to, and penning the post on, emptywhale's latest release 'That Grey Place We Go'. I marvel at their ability to create these works of art, to develop the structures and moments that have the capacity to take you unexpected places and thought patterns that seem to emerge from nowhere. I wonder for a moment about the technical aspects of who using what can make these sounds, then decide it doesn't matter how, all that matters is now...
I am a relative 'newbie' when it comes to the ambient genre, although accepting I have probably listened inadvertently to 'ambient' music in the past without realising it. And what is ambient, or any classification of music anyway? My first love has always been jazz...but who can define what that means anymore? And, shock horror, I have even been listening to some classical sounds lately! And in cyberspace threads start to appear...
I had accidentally come across Erik Satie on UbuWeb in the same way as I had with emptywhale on The Internet Archives, and had used music from both as sound tracks to some recent video work. It turns out that Satie is considered a precursor of ambient music. He also wrote the music for Rene Clair's 1924 dadaist film 'Entr'acte'. The film was scripted by one of my main influences Francis Picabia, and starred, among others, Marcel Duchamp whose 1957 talk 'The Creative Act' I had used as soundtrack for another video, a video that was greatly influenced, at least visually, by Brian Eno, the father of ambient music.
In recent discussion with emptywhale about possible collaboration Chris had followed his own path in finding out more about Herbie Hancock, whose 'Funk Hunter' I had rather lazily used in another video, but had never been happy with, wanting a more menacing effect. He had come across, and really liked, a 1974 Miles Davis track called 'He Loved Him Madly' written as a tribute to Duke Ellington. It turns out that it was a major influence on Brian Eno.
And so on it goes...I am a HUGE Miles Davis fan, never tiring of listening to his music, and drawing constant inspiration from his adoption of change as part of the creative process. His capacity to always push ahead, try new things, and yet remain true to his discipline propels me to write this post, not for you dear reader if you have ventured this far, but as a reminder to myself to build on the new directions in my work that developed through 2012. I will always have a soft spot for eros and thanatos, but in 2013 my hand reaches out for the handle of a new door...
la mariée mise à nu
This film is a mashup of a talk given by Marcel Duchamp in 1957 entitled 'The Creative Act', and footage of 60's glamour model Candy Earle. The visuals owe a lot to Brian Eno's 'Thursday Afternoon'. All of this can be sourced through The Internet Archives and UbuWeb...
Descending nude
My second movie! Where's the red carpet? Oh well...look on the bright side, it's only a minute long, the soundtracks groovy and it does feature June Palmer...