Things I liked this week…

The portraits by Lucia Moholy were the one thing at the MOMA Bauhaus exhibit that stopped me dead in my tracks:

lucia moholy, franz roh, 1926
photo: Franz Roh, 1926, by Lucia Moholy

And then this is a portrait of Lucia by her husband and photographer, László Moholy-Nagy.  Both of these pictures are really something else.

laszlo-moholy-nagy of lucia-moholy
photo: portrait of Lucia Moholy by László Moholy-Nagy

At nearly the same time as the Moholys, the painter Balthus was in Paris reaching a stride that would define his work as controversial, erotic, and, I think, brilliant.  It’s great to read his biography revolving around his early years in Paris and the circles he ran in, including, Giacometti, Many Ray, Camus, Miró, Picasso, Lacan.  The heavy hitters of culture, those that shaped our modern and even our post-modern sensibilities.  Which brings me to a discussion I was having last night w/ a friend in regards to movements in the arts and culture, those little sparks that ignite and burn and sometimes manage to change everything thereafter.  Namely we talked about how they’ve always been geographically based and how the internet has changed that old need to actually be somewhere and in a physically community to participate (Post-war Paris, NYC in the 50s and 80s, as two modern Western examples).  Does physical dissipation lead to cultural dissipation?  I think so.  Does that kind of ruin, or at least make much more difficult, the chances for those paradigm shifts of culture, the arts, and how people think?  Maybe.  Sure, it’s an over simplified view, b/c I really don’t know what I’m talking about, but I figure it’s something to roll around in your head while we have this discussion.  (Over our computers…oh, the irony).

balthus_fillette_et_un_homme
painting: by Balthus

Anyway, there’s an excellent portrait of Balthus by Irving Penn, w/ Balthus in a chair wearing a robe and a belt made of simple rope, with that infinite air of human-ess reaching into eternity that Penn instilled in so many of his sitters.  I’d seen it in one of Penn’s books, and thought it’d go nicely here, but can’t find it online anywhere, so I guess for now the internet does have it’s limits.

Painter’s and photographer’s makes me think of George Bernard Shaw’s quote that if Velazquez was alive today he’d be a photographer.  I mean, could you imagine!  Conde Naste contract.  B/c the guy sorta was doing what Leibovitz does, except he did it over 300 years ago w/ a paint brush

velazquez_meninas
painting: Las Meninas, 1665, by Diego Velazquez

Shaw, now there is a mind!  The guy must have been a photographers dream: self aware, smart, and, the icing, the cliche look of a wise man.  I mean, he was someone who believed death was only real b/c it was an idea put in our head, an idea that one really didn’t have to abide by.  Faaarrrrr out.  I guess he took the Nietzschian ubermensch literally.  If you want to get to know him, his plays Major Barbara and Man and Superman would be the two I’d suggest as seminal.

Karsh_Shaw
photo: George Bernard Shaw, ©The Estate of Yousuf Karsh

The threads holding this post together were thin to begin with, and they’ve completely disintegrated by this point.  So I’ll spare you any more of what was on my mind and will instead bid you adieu.

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