Monet Refuses the Operation

Monet refuses the Operation
by Lisel Mueller

Doctor, you say there are no haloes
around the streetlights in Paris
and what I see is an aberration
caused by old age, an affliction.
I tell you it has taken me all my life
to arrive at the vision of gas lamps as angels,
to soften and blur and finally banish
the edges you regret I don't see,
to learn that the line I called the horizon
does not exist and sky and water,
so long apart, are the same state of being.
Fifty-four years before I could see
Rouen cathedral is built
of parallel shafts of sun,
and now you want to restore
my youthful errors: fixed
notions of top and bottom,
the illusion of three-dimensional space,
wisteria separate
from the bridge it covers.
What can I say to convince you
the Houses of Parliament dissolves
night after night to become
the fluid dream of the Thames?
I will not return to a universe
of objects that don't know each other,
as if islands were not the lost children
of one great continent. The world
is flux, and light becomes what it touches,
becomes water, lilies on water,
above and below water,
becomes lilac and mauve and yellow
and white and cerulean lamps,
small fists passing sunlight
so quickly to one another
that it would take long, streaming hair
inside my brush to catch it.
To paint the speed of light!
Our weighted shapes, these verticals,
burn to mix with air
and change our bones, skin, clothes
to gases. Doctor,
if only you could see
how heaven pulls earth into its arms
and how infinitely the heart expands
to claim this world, blue vapor without end.

The Afflicted Yard - photos of Jamaica that white people didn't take

I didn't get to see the show "Infinite Island: Contemporary Caribbean Art" at the Brooklyn Museum of Art which closed on January 27, but I would have liked to. One of the participating artists was Peter Dean Rickards, a Jamaica-based photographer with a keen social/ cultural sensitivity and a wicked sense of humor. On his website his photos are divided into specific catagories: Women, Places, Famous People and People Who Think They're Famous, and Everything Else. I guess the above photo, Dogball, would qualify as everything else.

see more of Peter Dean Rickards' work: http://www.afflictedyard.com/index.html

Maria Magdelena Compos Pons

Maria Magdelena Compos Pons is an afro-cuban-american artist. I saw her show, "Everything is Separated by Water" a while ago at the Bass Museum in Miami Beach. My favorites are her large-format Polaroid photographs, in which she rearranges parts and symbols of personal and collective memories. Recurring images are birds, painted skin, strings and ties that resemble ligaments or unraveled nests, and natural objects such as seeds and plants. Her work explores her imagined displacement from Africa, her actual exile from Cuba, and her experience as a black Cuban woman living in North America.

You can see more of her work on Artnet:
http://www.artnet.com/Artists/ArtistHomePage.aspx?artist_id=184874&page_tab=Artworks_for_sale

Est-ce que ce monde est serieux?

La Corrida, version Francis Cabrel. The video is not exceptional, but the song is worth listening too. Anyway, I can't imagine what video on the topic would actually be watchable...

Miss Tic's stencil graffiti

A great French graffiti artist - see more on her website: http://www.missticinparis.com/

Vogue Paris 2008 Calender

The January issue of Vogue Paris not only featured the lovely Charlotte Gainsbourg but also came with a fantastic calender. It lists a saint for every day, and the photos speak for themselves.

Notice that the June baby is upside-down.

You can see it all on this flickr set:

http://flickr.com/photos/zecalifairy/2067784571/

It's a sad and beautiful world - Leo Ferre

Bologna - Museo Morandi

The Morandi Museum in Bologna is one of my very favorite museums, and I try to visit every time I'm in the vicinity. It's very overlooked, even though it's in the city's main piazza, and therefore very quiet even on weekends. There is a reconstruction of his simple studio in one room, and an extensive collection of his still lives, landscapes, drawings, and etchings. his paintings are so understated and possess a certain "metaphysical light". and he never repeats himself.

i think the museum is free now (at least it was on the Sunday that I was there).
http://www.museomorandi.it

Florence - Museo Marino Marini

I've gone on a sort of museum spree while in Europe, even more than usual. One wonderful discovery has been the Museo Marino Marini in Florence, which happens to be a really cool building. The original structure is a beautifully austere Alberti church, with an added modern interior network of walkways and platforms of a sort, to provide many views of Marini's statues. I actually wasn't really familiar with his work before going to see it, now I have probably seen it from more angles than the original artist! In any case, he's an important Italian artist of the recent kind and the museum is entirely overlooked by many visitors to Florence. I was there on a saturday afternoon and it was deserted except for one other person.

Graffiti in Italy

spotted in venice...also seen but much more difficult to photograph (and you might not even notice them in the daylight): a series of rat silhouettes leading from Piazza San Marco to the train station. they are along the ground, painted one shade darker than the grey stone, so you will have to look carefully for them.

L'atelier d'Alberto Giocometti at the Centre Pompidou

I saw this show in Paris last week. so good. It includes his more famous pieces from the Museum of Modern Art (Paris) collection but also a selection of his works including lesser (or un-)know pieces like his very first painting. Also a lot of photos and other personal artifacts. The show is open until February 11th.

Photographs of Joseph Szabo

Joseph Szabo's website: http://www.photosofteenagers.com/

This photo was used on the cover of a Dinosaur Jr. album (thanks to a reader for letting me know).