Saturday

Word of the day : condign : deserved, appropriate

- Julia leaves tomorrow, and I'm real sad!  Gabriel and I will miss her indescribably.  I just want her to do well in her interview (which I know she will) and then hurry home to us.

- Beautiful day here in the 'Boro: mid-70s and sunny

- How about that UC victory last night over the 'Cuse?  I can't believe the Cats are in the Big East final against Louisville.

- Last night, Julia and I watched Shark Night, an earnest, affecting sociological drama - nah, just kidding.  It's called Shark Night - what do you want?  It wasn't scary at all and made next to no sense  - seriously, why were these sharks so aggressive? - but it was compulsively, hideously watchable.  Yep, a fun bad movie.

I haven't posted an interesting painting in a while.  Here's one:

It's Bridge Over the Riou, a 1906 work by Andre Derain (and seen at the MOMA).  I like its curved colors, the askance brightness.  If you look close (or step back, whichever), you can see what Derain sees in this southern France location: a bridge on the lower right, houses beyond the trees, a cabin in the ravine. 

Derain was one of the founders of Fauvism, but the group still practiced, to an extent, what the Impressionists preached; that is, that a painting should try to capture fleeting moments of the natural world.  The colors are awfully bright, though, unnatural - the Fauvists liked extreme, lurid colors, throwing them wildly about like beasts! 

Eventually, after World War I, Derain went away from Fauvism and began working in a Neoclassical style; he illustrated books and began to design to work with the ballet, designs sets and costumes.  He travelled extensively in the 1920s (even to Cincinnati!) and stayed in Paris during the second World War.  To his chagrin, he was seen by Hitler and the Nazis as a model of artistic integrity.

Elliott Erwit (#8)

Erwitt, still alive and working, was born in Paris in 1928 but he grew up in Milan and France, emigrating to America in 1939.  Erwitt worked for Magnum Photos (Remember?  It was the agency Cartier Bresson founded after WWII.) in the 1950s.  He was one of the premiere practitioners of photojournalism and has taken some of the finest photos of the 20th century - images of Che Guevara, Marilyn Monroe, Jackie Kennedy - which are distinguished by a sense of wit and playfulness.

Erwitt, also a documentary filmmaker, worked taking tourist photos for countries and airlines in the 1950s and 1960s.  That's how the photo below came about:

Provence, France 1955

“To me, photography is an art of observation.  It’s about finding something interesting in an ordinary place . . . I’ve found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them.” - Erwitt

 

Finally, I continue to make my way through William Boyd's Any Human Heart.  It's looking like a *****-er.  Here are the books I've given five stars to since I joined Shelfari in October of 2010:
(Note: These are only the books I've read since October 2010 - not 5 star books I read in high school, etc.)

- And Then There Were None
- Brideshead Revisited
- Ragtime
- A Confederacy of Dunces
- A Farewell to Arms
- Go Tell it on the Mountain (James Baldwin)
- the play Rabbit Hole
- The Human Stain (Philip Roth)
- Everyman (also by Philip Roth)
- Under the Net (Iris Murdoch)
- Disturbing the Peace (Richard Yates)
- The Easter Parade (Yates)
- Tobacco Road (Erskine Caldwell)
- This Sweet Sickness and The Talented Mr. Ripley (Patricia Highsmith)
- Mr. Bridge (Evan Connell)
- The Invention of Hugo Cabret 
- Christine Falls (Benjamin Black)
- Hypothermia (Arnaldur Indridason)
- The Devotion of Suspect X (Keigo Higashino)   See: http://wwwconsideringcjf.blogspot.com/search?q=higashino
- True Grit 
- Nemesis (another Philip Roth)
- A Visit From the Goon Squad (Jennifer Egan)
- The Privileges (Jonathan Dee)