More positive wish

Going to Madrid to see this exhibition: MACCHIAIOLI. Impressionist realism in Italy (from 12 september to 5 January at the Fundación Mapfre, Madrid)

Notes from their website:

In Florence, towards 1855, a group of young painters was undertaking a quest for a new kind of art. They were deeply opposed to both the academic style of painting and historic Romanticism, the contexts of their training, and were pursuing truthfulness in art, adopting outdoor painting as their preferred practice. In their paintings, small in size, but grandiose in their conception, these young painters created an authentic and innovative vision of the Tuscan landscape, with stark contrasts of light and shadow achieved through the juxtaposition of blotches of colour. Giovanni Fattori, Silvestro Lega, Telemaco Signorini, Giuseppe Abbati, Giovanni Boldini and Odoardo Borrani were among the main protagonists of the movement, all of them gathered around critic and patron Diego Martelli.

 Known as the Macchiaioli (“blotch-makers”) – a name intended to be pejorative, alluding to the marked simplicity of their paintings – they were the instigators of one of the most brilliant chapters of the modernization of European painting, anticipating a significant number of the premises later proclaimed by the Impressionists.


Light and shadow, it still matters.  It still has to matter somehow.

Useless wish: ancient maps vs. Google

How I wish the authors of those magnificent first maps could open their eyes for just one minute and throw a glance at Google maps.

 

(and how on earth can herebedragons@gmail. com be already taken?"Here be dragons" means dangerous or unexplored territories, in imitation of the medieval practice of putting dragons, sea serpents and other mythological creatures in uncharted areas of maps)

The way we were

Bankers

Historical record keeping

Hannah Höch's address book

Interesting lady: Hannah Höch

Name: Hannah

Surname: Höch

(Gosh! it feels as if I'm copying Wikipedia, but I've been doing this for ages!)

Date of birth: November 1, 1889

Nationality: German

Why did she call my attention: She is the pioneer of the artistic form photomontage and member of the Dada movement

What WikiP says: "Many of her pieces sardonically critique the mass culture beauty industry, at the time gaining significant momentum in mass media through the rise of fashion and advertising photography"

I got this information here

And some photomontages here

The photomontages of Hannah Höch

The magic of drawing

Andrea del Sarto

About painting

painting by Guillermo Pérez Villalta, Solitude, 1970

On show until 12 January 2014 at the Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo, Seville

Today I love

this painting by Pedro Osés, "Dedis", 1971

 and this one by Guillermo Pérez Villalta, Morning self-portrait, 1973

= Same painting, different setting

Find of the day

Quote

"Art is not self-expression


It is the self expressing all of the elements of the culture that has shaped it. We filter the ambient information that surrounds us-from our families, from our communities, from the information that bombards us every day from myriad sources. We do not create this information; it helps to create us. We in turn start to interpret it and describe it to ourselves and to others as a means to understand it. This is the art impulse. Even works of pure imagination have sources outside of ourselves. Know your sources."

from "101 things to learn in Art School" by Kit White

World hotline

Dear world, dial  (+31) (0)70 302 23 23 and we'll help you solve your problems.

We're here to help

signed:

Who would have guessed

"The two governments will consult each other, prior to any decision, on all important questions of foreign policy, and in the first place on questions of common interest, with a view to arriving, insofar is possible, at a similar position"

"Les deux Gouvernements se consulteront, avant toute décision, sur toutes les questions importantes de politique étrangère, et en premier lieu sur les questions d’intérêt commun, en vue de parvenir, autant que possible, à une position analogue"

Fragment of the Elysée Treaty, signed by France and Germany in January 1962