Discoveries: Arts and Culture

A Noble prize winner in 1980, Milosz taught at Berkeley in the 60's and lived not far from where I live, on Grizzley Peak and Centennial where the journalist Mark Danner, CAl faculty, now lives...Milosz was very lonely while living at Berkeley, and mailed his poems to himself, sometimes...a survivor of the Russian revolution and both world wars, he was isolated from both the American literary scene and the literary life in Poland, from which he defected in 1951.  His books were subsequently banned.  The film by Juoazas Javaitis, Lithuanian director euologizes Milosz's life, childhood and time in Poland...he, also having had a life in Vilnius, Lithuania. Part of the "Auteur Author" film series presented as part of the second East Bay Berkeley Book Festival, june 2 and 3.  Milosz died at age 93 in Cracow, to which he returned, as its compass suited him.   Anthony Milosz, his son introduced the film, and asserted that his father was also American, as well as Polish. Ro...

" A person in silence can in reading a book change his/her life."   Like Velasquez's early portraits, where he looks at faces of common people, we get a full sense of their interior life, of their impoverishment and powerlessness, in their physiogamy.   Toibin  wants to create such character portraits in words. He cites his portrait of Lady Gregory patron of WB Yeats and of the Dublin Theater. In another quotation, he compares a sense of place in Nora Webster, for example, as being like a Renaissance painting, where the town and mountains  recede into the background. When speaking of his book which is very loved, about Henry James, "THE MASTER", he says that what is interesting in James' novels is that there is a secret, a mystery which creates tension and ambiguity in his work between the interior life and the public manifestation. When a review is brought up to him by the Chancellor, he says his response was to "smile and nod"; that i...

Nearly all the cartoons in this issue are about Trump, who in a benign way, is best to be perceived as a cartoon.   It will make you feel better to look at these in issue:  April 25, 2016.  See Page 49   It's Still April Fool.  Trump Comes Clean.  "just a Joke, Folks.  All A Big Put On...Amazed anyone believed he was serious. : don't we wish!   Next one:  Page 53. (card players)   "One no-trump. Oh, please, God, no Trump."  p 54  Bar patrons:  "He used to think he was Napoleon -- now he thinks he's Trump.:"   I can related to that; I am seeing Trump people on the sidewalk and everywhere...they are so assertive and aggressive...and empty! p 56 "Joe, what about you?   Would you like to make a face at Mr. Trump?"   p 67  "I thought we agreed that the bedromm is a Trump - free zone"...p. 68  "If Trump becomes President, I don't care how high he builds that wall -- I'm going over it." "  p ...

A glance at her spring calendar confirms her passion for contemporary music, and in a recent interview, Cahill said she's eager for audiences to hear the works she'll present on four upcoming programs. Berkeley pianist Sarah Cahill. (CHRISTINE ALICINO) The music begins on April 21, when she'll host "Full: Invent" at the new Berkeley Art Museum. Cahill, who curated a series at the old Berkeley Museum (guests included an eclectic mix, from Riley to the Residents), is assembling a similarly innovative lineup for the "Full" series, which presents events each month on the full moon. "This one features invented instruments," she said. "Paul Dresher is bringing his Quadrachord." Cahill's own performances begin on April 30, when she'll take the stage along with a group of hand-picked artists in "Luciano Chessa: a Retrospective," part of the New Frequencies Festival at the Yerba ...

This is a lovely article giving new perspectives on Mallarme's relationship to Modernism as well as on translation from french, a very nuanced language,  to English, the language noted for multiple valences.  Alex Ross is a clever writer, starting out by likening the Modernists to explorers, in this instance, "Amundsen"!  Immediately, he has my attention.  The illustration is by Hugo Guinness. Another italicized sub heading is:  " After only a few lines of Mallarme, you are engulfed in fine mist, and terror sets in. " The Scottish poet Peter Manson publishes a collection of translations in 2012(Miami University Press) .  The one cited enploys a swan caught in the ice. " The subsequent sentences are impacted and fractured, the ;jamming together of disconnected images presaging Dadiasim.  " Mallarme also affected the visual artists of his time, having helped to define Impressionism in an 1876 essay; Manet, Whistler, Gauguin, and Renoir made portrait...

The World in a Book: “The Nuremberg Chronicle” and the Art of German Renaissance Illustration January 9, 2016 – May 2, 2016 REVA AND DAVID LOGAN GALLERY OF ILLUSTRATED BOOKS A milestone in the history of publishing, the  Nuremberg Chronicle (Liber Chronicarum)  of 1493  a hugely ambitious book documenting the entire history of the world back to the Creation with a  text by German scholar Hartmann Schedel and an extensive illustration program in woodcuts primarily by Albrecht Durer.   I did my thesis paper in a course on wood block prints in a Museums Studies course at the University of Delaware. My subject was Albrecht Durer, who enjoyed the protection of the King. .  The Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts owns a first edition of the  Nuremberg Chronicle —one of approximately 400 surviving copies of the roughly 1,500 published with a Latin text on June 12, 1493—as well as a collection of unbound sheets orphaned from other copie...

                                                              Dita Amory at the Legion of Honor Notes from her lecture:    The pencil acts as the artist’s eye.  He outlined the entire picture in charcoal.  No, he did not prime the surface(Q/A) .  He painted from photographs.  He painted on a free hanging canvas which he did not stretch until finished; that way he could add more length or width to it.  He often painted from photographs. He had many sketch books (now in Bibliotheque National, Paris) in which he noted color, light, conditions, an in impression in order to capture perceptual data for later paintings. “Sensation” lead to “color tones” through the process of seduction. He sketched with a small stubby pencil.   Brushworks in zones of color.   Activated bru...