Postcard from Crete

Colours of Crete



Mosaic floor in early christian basilica, Hersonissos

Door detail


Turkish minaret, Chania

Shop window

Street in Chania

Peculiar entrance!

Shop front

Street in Chania

Colourful !

The Venetian harbour in Chania

Taking a walk

Archanes

Detail in St. Titus Church, Heraklio

Siesta

Oops,


More than one month since I wrote the last post !

I guess I've been taking too many siestas...I am such an expert now.

This is definitely a

But now I'm absolutely looking forward to sending out a few postcards of beautiful Crete.

Travel

Theorias, ideologia,etnikos,demokratia, akadimia...

Whether our mother tongue is French, English, Spanish, we can all understand these words even though I have not written those words in any of those languages.

I'll be away for a few days to the place where it all started. By all I mean a great deal of who we are today.The home of this lady to your left. (How on earth can a sculpture be sexy, can anyone explain that to me?)

By the way, in this place Zoe means life and Irene means...peace. Hope to see you soon.

Photo: Snake Goddess, from www.dilon.com

Fatema Mernissi

I'm reading and loving this book by Moroccan sociologist Fatema Mernissi:

It's a book about the crossing of borders at many different levels, but also about a very special grandmother, about her sufi heritage, about intelligence, about story tellers whatever the medium used, about curious translations, about a woman's intellectual curiosity.

I've learnt that the fabric muslin is named after the Iraqi town of Mosul, where it used to be manufactured, and also discovered the concepts of majliss, lawami, samar...whole new worlds to explore.

I once heard her say that when you travel and show yourself in front of strangers you unveil your self, you get to know who you are. I'm looking forward to reading another of her books "Dreams of Trespass: Tales of a Haren girlhood"

This might be the right moment for you to listen to some music by Omar Faruk Tekbilek, the Turkish musician. But beware because "I love you" and "Moment of doubt" can make funny things to your heart.

Remember Rwanda

This post is just a link to My Marrakesh blog and to a voice that needs to be heard, one amongst so many.


I think that horror and cruelty is part of our humanity, but a part that can be subverted. Not fighting for peace, or against anything, not struggling painfully through the years to reach peace, but adopting peace as a principle. Just like that, with a leap of consciousness that could take half a second. A small step that could become the greatest.

Ukiyo-e

Last August I spent a couple of days in Barcelona and I went to visit this exhibition:

I'd like to thank Quicoto for letting me use his photograph here. My own photograph of the façace of La Pedrera (Gaudí's building where the exhibition was held) was not that good and only half of the poster appeared. Here's a link to his flickr photostream and his blog. Thank you Quicoto.

Ukiyo-e literally means "images of a floating world". I had never heard the word in my life, but those Japanese prints of the XVII and XIX century took my breath away. I had heard the name of Hokusai before, but Harunobu, Kiyonaga, Utamaro or Hiroshige sounded all new to me.

A video also showed the inmense talent and mastery of the craft required by wood carvers to achieve those delicate lines on the paper after printing.

This exhibition has been organized jointly by the Caixa Catalunya Foundation and the French National Library and it will be shown in public again in Paris from 17 November till 15 February 2009.

(This might be the first comic strip ever, apparently the cat is saying something like "I'm fed up of these people who are here disturbing my peace" or something of that sort)

Images from El Mundo newspaper

I also went to have a look at the bookshop in the ground floor and I came across a gorgeous book: "Japonisme". It's a book about the influence of Japanese art on Western art , which it turns out to be huge! (and I couldn't help it, some of the prints of the later periods kept reminding me of the Tintin strips by Hergé!)

Maybe the fact that Florizelle, the author of the ineffable Le Divan Fumoir Bohémien had once pointed me in the direction of Pattern Recognition, the wonderful livejournal where funny lady posts so many gorgeous images of Japanese prints, made me go for this exhibition instead of that of Duchamp or Nancy Spero's, which were also shown in Barcelona at the time, and also made me drool. (This could be my answer to the question that Maryam once raised in her blog "How has blogging really changed your life?")

It is curious that some time later, when I was visiting funny lady's website again I noticed the link to one of her favourite blogs: Japonisme.

Quote

I think this might be my favourite quote from the Art section of Wikiquote:

"Talking about art is like dancing about architecture

David Bowie

Postcard from Barcelona

Graffiti in Ciutat Vella

Casa Batló

Palau de la Música Catalana

Colourful ticket booth at the Palau de la Música Catalana

Graffiti in the Gothic quarter

Street in the Gothic quarter

The charm of old doors

Nice window

Shop window

The family, pendant exhibited at La Pedrera

Mariona Cabassa

What great job by Mariona Cabassa illustrating an article called "The ages of childhood" on yesterday's issue of Magazine magazine (well, it's called Magazine, this magazine).

Favourite bracelets

klñ




Not exactly Chopard...

A pinch of magic with Surlalune

The shoes that were danced to pieces, by Elenore Abbott, 1920

Two King's Children, by Elenore Abbott, 1920

I love today's find, surlalunefairytales.com, an amazing website artfully designed by Heidi Anne Heider where we can learn a lot about the work of fairy tales writers and classic illustrators. It's a place to come back many times and a source of endless visual delight.

Who's that girl II?

Photograph of a shop window in Barcelona. Welcome to the fantastic world of ex libris

Virtual Art Museum

What a good idea!

Paco Arenas, an art teacher from Avilés, a small town in northern Spain, has created a virtual web museum showcasing the work of his pupils since he first started teaching art in 1971. I find so many of these works so interesting and fun to see! He has classified them by courses, techniques and themes according to the lessons taught in class. I'm showing just a few examples.(Thanks Paco)

Scientific illustration: mixed media, watercolour and ink

Life study

Design: illustration and the comic strip

Tiles and colours

Imagined scenes and actions

Illustrated stories or poems, mixed media: