Good Old Charlie

Simic Says:

Don’t forget sausages sautéed with potatoes and onions! It’s also highly advisable to have a philosopher or two on hand. A few pages of Plato while working on a baked ham. Wittgenstein’s Tractatus over a bowl of spaghetti with littleneck clams. We think best when we bring opposites together, when we realize that all these realities, one inside the other, are somehow connected. That’s how the wonder and amazement that are so necessary to both poetry and philosophy come about. A “truth” detached and purified of pleasures of ordinary life is not worth a damn in my view. Every grand theory and noble sentiment ought to be first tested in the kitchen—and then in bed, of course.

--Paris Review interview, spring 2005

two new old ones

Here are two painters I've recently discovered. The first is Joseph Solman, who only recently died, and was part of the school that came up around Jackson Pollack et all (though he was much less well known), and the second is Elliott Daingerfeild, who worked in the late nineteenth, early twentieth century. The first two pieces are called "Studio Interior," and "Easel and Mirror." The Daingefeild is called "Moon Rising over Fog Clouds."

a song for me?

you shouldn't have

Viva

here's a portrait by Diane Arbus of Warhol factory star Viva, who was a writer/film star/personality of the seventies, and was actually totally crazy. She lives in Florida now, painting landscapes, I guess, but this picture is still awesome.

wow

choices

More than two dozen vandals
who hosted a party inside Robert Frost's former home were
ordered to take a class on his poetry, taught by Frost's
biographer. "This is where Frost is relevant," Jay Parini
said to the class, speaking about Frost's poem "The Road
Not Taken." "You come to a path in the woods where you can
say, 'Shall I go to this party and get drunk out of my
mind?' Everything in life is choices."
--Harper's

wow

Tropic of Cancer was great but this is a-ma-zing

It's Like That

Albert (E.) says: Dancers are the athletes of God.

zines are weird

here is an odd web-zine I came across recently. I have no idea what, exactly, it is about, but it seems to focus on doodling and primitivism....eclectic

www.socialfiction.org

leggo my eggleston

Snooping around at my new place of work, came across some stuff by photographer William Eggleston. I really like his work. Also, um, I have found my doppleganger...see the last picture. Freaky, right?

this is just to say

i hope i am not sullying the content of this blog in posting this video, but this is too good not to. I feel that it is, in some way, wrong to say "I want to be this," and yet...

battle of the fishes

Andre Masson was an artist in the early 20th century, whose work was of the surrealist school, and marked by the use of automatic drawing. The top one, my fave, is called battle of the fishes, and evokes an undersea environment through vague doodling, without any actual representational forms. The colors are great, and it reminds me of embroidery. I like it a lot.

My Kind of Man

I wish I had a time machine, so that I could go to this concert. Neil Young is grunge with soul.

I Love Libraries

So I've recently decided that part of my life's work will be to tour the world's most beautiful libraries. This one, La Biblioteca de la Real Academia de la Lengua, in Madrid, would be a good place to start. Here is a url for more awesome libraries, from a great travel blog called Curious Expeditions: http://curiousexpeditions.org/?p=78

Kiss Me Kees

Thought the blog was looking a little drab, so naturally I turned to my friends, the Fauves. I actually don't really like most fauvist art, but Kees van Dongen made some wonderful portraits. Kees was a dutch painter who began exhibiting in Paris in the early 20th century. I put two of my faves above; you can tell he's a sartorialist at heart.

Oh No

Researchers in Virginia found that due to
pollution the scent of flowers, which could travel up to
4,000 feet during the nineteenth century, now travels not
even a quarter of that distance

pretty surreal

Here is a short film by a Czech surrealist filmmaker named Jan Švankmajer. He works a lot with claymation and puppetry, though this one (probably my favorite) features niether...I guess you would call this stop-motion demolition animation, or something. The short is called "Johann Sebastian Bach: Fantasy in G minor," and was released in 1965...think of it as a sort of updated Fantasia. Watch this through to the end, it's totally worth it.

A Glove!

Here's a couple of images from a series of etchings done by a Belgian symbolist artist named Max Klinger. The series, published in 1881, is called "Ein Handusch" (or: A Glove), and is all about losing and finding a glove. Cool.

All I Want is a Silver Plated Tortoise

For more, see Huysmans' "Against Nature"

yard of blonde girls, micah p hinson covering jeff buckley

the animation is a little odd but this is one of the most beautiful songs i have ever heard.

Anna Akhmatova part II

Anna was so cool that Modigliani took her as his muse.

Too True

"There are only two things that can destroy a healthy man: love trouble, ambition, and financial catastrophe. And that is already three things, and there are a lot more." --Peter Altenberg, Fechsung

Joseph Cornell I Love You Really I Do

he often conceived of his boxes as love letters sending them to stars of the stage and screen

Ralph Goings

hey all you snobs, i love photorealism. also, ketchup.

Steller's Sea Cow

Sometimes I feel like an extinct animal. This is Steller's Sea Cow drawn by Georg Steller himself. Between you and me, I would not be smiling placidly if my subcutaneous fat were used as a butter substitute.

Anna Akhmatova

well, if you're going to be a tragic genius, get your heart broken all over the place, suffer physical and artistic persecution from your government and stuff, might as well do it looking like this

A B C X X X

Censorship is bad, but these pictures of censored books are kind of nice.

Charis Weston

Edward Weston's wife, Charis Weston, acted as his muse for many years, and is the subject of many of my favorite photographs by him. Not much is known about her, but she looks amazing. Enjoy.

your attention please

Over the next year, Doppleganger will become a travelblog! Expect highly saturated pictures of: Parisian fruit stalls, grocery-store treasures, and well-dressed French children. Also, hopefully: travels in rural spain (possible portrait of my masseuse-aunt and the uncle who has a glass eye and three olympic gold medals), jaunts to London and Oxford, and more.

The Eternal Children

Here is the first part of a documentary called "The Eternal Children" about neo folk... I love folk folk, and a lot of this stuff sounds really really nice, especially the music of Devendra Banhardt and Anthony and the Johnsons. They also all look like really fun people...I pretty much want to be friends with all of them. There are six other parts of the documentary, which you can find on youtube.

c'est "Super Cool"

Here are a couple images (A,B,and C) from a series called "The Alphabet" done by this amazing Parisian design firm called M/M. They have created posters, advertisements, and editorials for brands like Hermes and Balenciaga, I.D. magazine, and more. Though much of their work is commercial, they also borrow from their commercial work to create art that is exhibited and sold in galleries. You can see their catalogue here:

Link

Ban This

Not that I'm into skateboarding, particularly, but Ray Barbee is totally awesome.

sweet peripheries

I discovered the website of this library based in Brooklyn called "The Reanimation Library." Basically, it houses a collection of out of print and outdated books, and caters to artists, writers, etc. It sounds totally awesome.
Link

Lagos Calling

Here are some amazing shots taken by photographer Clayton James Cubitt of Nigerian punks. Pretty fucking cool.

dark days

This movie, originally called Une Voyage dans la Lune, was released in 1902, and is one of the first science fiction movies ever. The original movie, narrated in english (with accent AND lisp), can be found here

maps?

Here's an artist, Mark Bradford, who I've come across recently, and whose stuff is kind of cool. He's coming out of LA, and has pieces in the Saatchi and the Whitney. His art is abstract, but has a topographic quality achieved through his use of squares cut from cardboard, billboards, etc. Really collage-y; i bet these look amazing in person.

cover charge

okay so here are some scans of book covers from the 40's, 50's, and 60's. The cover art on the more serious novels tend to be better, but i thought some of these were pretty funny.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jl-incrowd/sets/