F-se! Era uma vez ... El Mas Guapo! Guapísimo! Já é Quarentão!

F-se! Feliz Cumple Años Angel!

GOSSIP: Javier Bardem cumple 40 años Y lo celebra inmerso en el rodaje de 'Biutiful' entre rumores de ruptura con Penélope Cruz, aunque nunca confirmaron su relación.

F-se! Tudo o resto e Parentalidades. O Meu Manifesto de Postagem.

Quando a Cultura é Ruído. Gatos Por Lebre y Fraude y Embuste. Eu Tenho Agora Este Web-Tempo.



F-se! O Tudo o resto, é só mesmo Aqui!

Suffering Is Optional

When Andrew Wyeth died recently, it came as a bit of a shock. Even though he was 91 years old, Wyeth remained energetic and amazingly retained most of his eyesight and dexterity to the very end. It was a much different case for Auguste Renoir. Born February 25, 1841, Renoir struggled with rheumatoid arthritis for approximately the last 25 years of his life, yet never stopped working. I had always heard stories that Renoir needed to strap the brush to his crippled hand in later years. According to a 1997 article in the British Medical Journal by Boonen et al titled “How Renoir coped with rheumatoid arthritis”(registration required), the bandages in photos of Renoir late in life (above) were applied not to hold the brush in place but to absorb the sweat of his hands, which could have led to painful sores if left alone. Unable to hold his palette, Renoir balanced it on his knees, leaving the arrangement of colors onto the palette to assistants. Doctors believe that Renoir’s problems began around the age of 50, progressively worsening until he was unable to walk at all after reaching 70. Yet, despite all these ailments, Renoir continued to paint, and paint beautifully. In fact, the brushwork remained energetic, if slightly shorter, while the colors took on a whole new vibrancy.

In addition to painfully crippled hands, Renoir eventually suffered from ankylosis of his right shoulder that left it virtually paralyzed. Renoir actually was ambidextrous and painted with his left hand after breaking his right arm twice as a younger man, so he attempted to paint with his left hand (above) to compensate for his right shoulder. It’s a testament to just how ambidextrous Renoir actually was that experts can’t distinguish the right-handed Renoirs from the left-handed ones. Even painting with both hands, Renoir’s stiffened body forced to him move as much as possible to reach the canvas. He painted increasingly smaller and smaller sections at a time, slowing down his productivity. Ever inventive, Renoir designed a picture rolling system that scrolled the canvas on wooden slats joined by an old bicycle chain. Renoir cranked the device to move the canvas up and down as he wanted. The paralyzed American painter Chuck Close uses a similar, although much more modernly mechanized system to move his huge canvases around.


For a painter used to painting out of doors, a wheelchair must have seemed an insufferable prison. Fortunately, Renoir’s devoted family and servants helped him move outside when he was well enough to work out of doors. The photo above shows Renoir being carried in a sedan chair in 1917 through the Renoir family’s garden in Cagnes-sur-Mer. Renoir’s burly cook apparently would lift the frail artist in her arms and carry him about. Renoir’s family chauffeur would similarly drive the artist around the nearby countryside in search of new subjects to paint. As much as I’ve always loved Renoir’s work, after I learned of his physical problems and his continued desire to paint, I gained a whole new respect for him as an artist and a person. All of Renoir’s work is so full of joy, but to know just how much pain was endured in the pursuit of that joy makes it all the more jubilant to me. Some great distance runner once said, “Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.” Renoir felt the pain, but chose not to suffer but to live, and to create.

Change We Can Believe In

In just another of the many signs of the radical changing of the guard with the Presidency of Barack Obama comes news that the First Couple will be decorating their private living space with modern art by masters such as Ed Ruscha, Robert Rauschenberg, and Jasper Johns (whose Three Flags, from 1958, appears above). Interior designer Michael Smith is asking museums across the country to suggest works from their modern and contemporary art collections that they’d be willing to loan to the Obamas. After the previous 8 years of anti-intellectualism, anti-modernism, and anti-Americanism, it will be nice to know that the work of living, breathing artists will grace the walls of the leader of the free world and inspire him to new heights. Perhaps this signals a new embrace of culture and the arts by our government, even at this time of financial crisis. At the very least, I doubt Obama will request any art just because he thinks the guy looks like him.

F-se! Suzzan Blac Goddess Of Gore! Ou A Mutilação - Consentida - Feminina ...

SUZZAN BLAC

SuZZaN B. Rasga na tela a vertigem do belo, da beleza à base do bisturi, o desejo cumprido esmaga-se na inacção que se adivinha da pose. A Pose, O desejo da Pose, ter certa Imagem, o desejo assolapado de transformar algo em si com vista a um efeito, a um certo reflexo que reconciliará com o espelho o olhar de assomo ... tudo isso finda abruptamente na mutilação dos membros. A Mutilação da Natureza. No Humano, a Natureza é a Acção. Assim, a violência, as violências no feminino, simbolizadas nas Mutilação, são reflexo da Negação da Acção, A Mulher Objecto Y Etc's. ... ... que pena não estar em Londres para ir ver ...

F-se!Aqui, a Mutilação do Endeusamento da Beleza de Pacote

The Art of Death

While recently reading Drew Gilpin Faust’s This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War, which brilliantly covers the entire range of that period’s relationship with death, including the act of killing itself, I was surprised, but shouldn’t have been, to find Winslow Homer’s Sharpshooter on Picket Duty (above, from 1862). Born February 24, 1836, Homer served as an artist-correspondent for Harper’s Magazine during the American Civil War, sketching and painting many images that would be translated into etchings for mass consumption. Homer painted many scenes of everyday Union Army life, but also included disturbing images such as that of the sharpshooter. Faust explains how the improved rifle technology increased the accurate range of the shooter, allowing snipers to kill from seemingly out of nowhere at any time, thus inspiring an endless sense of dread that death could come at any moment. Such sharpshooters became pariahs among even their fellow soldiers, with their green camouflage uniforms leading others to call them “snakes.” Homer himself failed to understand the psychology of these cool killers. "I looked through one of their rifles once,” Homer wrote years later. “The impression struck me as being as near murder as anything I could think of in connection with the army and I always had a horror of that branch of the service."

Even Homer’s images of moments of tranquility in wartime such as Home, Sweet Home (above, from 1863) hold the sense of impending death. The two men in the foreground listen to the band in the distance play the song “Home, Sweet Home,” but any memories of domestic bliss only make the reality around them seem that much bleaker. It was such moments in the camps that would often be interrupted by the bullet of a sharpshooter or a shell fired from a great distance. Faust writes of how the death of some men eating dinner in a tent hit by an exploding shell shocked the survivors more than the deaths they witnessed in combat. Entering combat at least prepared soldiers for the worst, whereas death in times of ease planted the seeds of unrest that slowly drove men insane with worry over forces beyond their control. Snipers and artillerymen, aided by enhanced weapons, seemed like cruel gods of fate looking forward to shattering moments such as listening to music in camp solely for the pure irony.


Homer’s The Veteran in a New Field (above, from 1865) shows how even the end of the war itself couldn’t end the hold of death upon those who had fought and those who had waited for those fighting to return. Sweeping his long scythe like the Grim Reaper himself, the veteran strips off his uniform jacket and gets down to the work of the farm seemingly at the very moment of his return, hoping to work away the blood staining his hands. The cloverleaf insignia on the soldier’s canteen identifies him as a member of the First Division of the Second Corps of the Sixty-first New York Volunteers and the farm itself comes from Belmont, Massachusetts, but the man himself is everyman of the Civil War and, by extension, any war. Despite the success of his Civil War work, Homer never returned to the role of war correspondent, leaving that job to younger, less-jaded eyes. Homer saw too much death during the Civil War to want to see more. For the rest of his career, Homer searched for images of human reconciliation with nature, often through hunting and fishing. Yet still, those images continued the art of death for Homer and never bridged the gap that the Civil War had torn open.

Flying Start

What if Gauguin had never gotten to Tahiti? What if Van Gogh had never traveled to Arles? How many more artists can you think of that enriched their art through travel? How many artists throughout history would have realized their dreams if only they had the means to expand their horizons? How many artists today could soar to new heights if given the chance to see more of the world?

In the spirit of the London 2012 Summer Olympic Games, British Airways announces Great Britons—a contest in which emerging British talents in fashion, art and design, innovation, sport, community, or performing arts can win one of 180 flights to any British Airways destination in the world. All you have to do is tell your story and explain how travel could help you develop your talents. Prove that you have the same thirst for excellence that Olympians and Paralympians do. The final winners will be decided by a public vote.

So, if you’re a British artist wishing you could study Renaissance Italy or Ancient Egypt firsthand, here’s your chance. Good luck!

F-se! Ainda Apreendem a Obscena Por O Conteúdo Não Corresponde à Letra Ao Título.

A Revista OBSCENA Vende-se Aqui

F-se! Pela Escassez de Postos de Venda, Até Parece Uma Revista Perseguida Pela PSP.

Boy Wonder

At the tender of age of just 13, Fyodor Vasilyev began taking classes at night to learn how to paint. Born February 22, 1850, Vasilyev felt pressure to support his family after the death of his father and hoped to take the skills he’d learned as a painting restorer and use them as a maker of pictures himself. A few years later, Russian landscape painter Ivan Shishkin fell in love with Vasilyev’s sister and soon began teaching Fyodor his secrets. Shishkin eventually introduced his young protégé to other great Russian painters of the time, including Ilya Repin, who also took Vasilyev under his wing. Before turning twenty, Vasilyev, the boy wonder of Russian painting, was creating works such as Illumination in St. Petersburg (above, from 1869). It is truly amazing just how quickly Vasilyev put into practice the lessons and advice he received. Illumination in St. Petersburg looks like something Whistler might paint if he found himself in Russia on a cold, dark night pierced by gaslight. The way the moon silhouettes the great dome in the distance like a white nimbus brings the entire picture together. The quick execution of the people bustling along the street brings to mind the Parisians of the Impressionists, just beginning to work around the same time.

Like the Impressionists, Vasilyev was influenced by the artists of the Barbizon School, such as Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot, Jean-François Millet, and Théodore Rousseau. Vasilyev most likely learned of the Barbizon style through Shishkin, but once he knew the basics of the style, he quickly made it his own. Vasilyev’s Thaw (above, from 1871) unites the bleakness of earth and sky in the middle of an unforgiving Russian winter. The sky seems almost more solid than the ground, which is divided by swirling ruts that reveal the dark earth beneath the snow and give the surface as much a sense of movement as the clouds above. The great horizontals of Thaw make it seem to extend forever—as “endless” as the famous Russian winters themselves. Vasilyev takes care to derive maximum drama from every element of nature, just as Corot, Millet, and Rousseau took the Forest of Fontainebleau and squeezed every last drop of interest from it.

Vasilyev’s Wet Meadow (above, from 1872) shows how he was able to do more than winter snowscapes. The richness of detail in the foreground enhances the sense of depth as Vasilyev moves back into the picture plane and softens the focus. Again, the clouds above rival the best that the Barbizon artists have to offer. Still only 22 years old, Vasilyev seemed poised to rule over the Russian art world for decades. Sadly, after a little more than a year after painting Wet Meadow, Vasilyev was dead, a victim of tuberculosis. Vasilyev’s tuberculosis forced him to paint indoors. He painted Wet Meadow entirely from memory. Just as he was gaining fame and seeing more that Russia’s great landmass had to offer as subject matter, Vasilyev’s life and career were over. Fortunately, Vasilyev lived on in the sense of influencing the next generation of Russian landscape artists, who followed his example of taking the best of the French style and making it distinctly Russian.

Garden Party

The story of Nils Büttner’s The History of Gardens in Painting is essentially the story of the garden in human history itself—a wish to return to paradise physically, spiritually, or both. Using the usual Abbeville Press style of lavish illustration, Büttner works his way through the beginnings of art history to the present day, hitting upon the usual suspects such as Claude Monet and the Impressionists (above, Monet’s Iris Bed in Monet’s Garden, from 1900) but also calling forth artists less well known for their natural touch, bringing both those artists and their periods into fresh perspective. Büttner’s text strikes at the heart of the human fascination with green oases and how the philosophy underpinning that fascination has changed in tandem with Western civilization’s evolving relationship with the earth. “[E]ven illustrations of actual gardens intended as topographical records are often echoes of human hopes or longings or projections of symbolic meanings,” Büttner writes. From the ancient Romans to the most modern of modern artists, the garden has held a unique place in the creative mind of mankind and reflected many of the central concerns of each age.

Büttner begins with the Romans and “the ideal of the Roman villa, which over time had come to epitomize otium, that exquisite calm, far from the hectic bustle of city life, universally considered necessary for any kind of intellectual activity.” The Romans actually borrowed this garden ideal from the Greeks and Egyptians, from whom they borrowed almost everything else. When living gardens were impractical, painted ones sufficed. A garden landscape of the Villa of Livia (above) created a grotto-like effect in a windowless, underground room. Büttner easily transitions from this Roman contemplative use of the painted garden to the religious contemplative use of the early Christians, who linked Christ with the lost paradise of Eden. Without getting bogged down in detail, Büttner explains how flower symbolism developed around figures such as Christ and the Virgin Mary into a full-grown visual garden of salvation for believers. Büttner shows how even the garden of courtly love, a parallel development to the Christian painted garden, bought into the idea of garden as the means of salvation. “Nothing that conflicts with the ethic of courtly love is admitted into the garden,” Büttner writes, “wickedness, hate, greed, envy, and miserliness are banished from it as surely as are old age and poverty.” Sacred and profane love follow the same program of green power.

When Büttner reaches the Renaissance and Baroque periods, we truly get a sense of how the garden became an ideological battleground in art. In addition to presenting familiar names such as Fra Angelico, Botticelli, and Andrea Mantegna, Büttner pulls out fascinating artists from the shadows of art history such as Jacob Cornelisz van Oostsanen. Van Oostanen’s Christ as Gardener (above, from 1507) depicts Christ as literally a gardener, with spade in hand, but “the garden here tended by Christ,” Büttner writes, “is to be perceived topologically as a symbol of the human soul.” Diving deep into the vast seas of religious images of these periods, Büttner always manages to resurface with a precisely apt picture to get his point across. Similarly, Lucas Cranach the Younger’s 1569 painting The Lord’s Vinyard shows a figure tending the garden of the human soul, but Martin Luther rather than Christ, who has been betrayed by the poor stewards of the Catholic church, according to the Reformation. The ancient Roman’s idea of the garden as philosophical facilitator gives way to a free-for-all atmosphere in such works in which the physical garden itself is reduced to nothing but a stage prop for propaganda.


As the power of the church began to fade and secular power took command, the garden as ideological battleground changed from a spiritual landscape to a landscape of social and political standing. Kings began to surround their palaces with elaborately structured gardens, such as the Gardens of Versailles. “Both the elaborate garden structures and the floral splendor displayed were luxuries reserved for the upper classes,” Büttner explains, “and thus clear evidence of social distinction.” When Rubens paints his self-portrait titled Peter Paul Rubens with Helene Fourment and Nicolas Rubens in the Garden in 1630, he shows himself as the owner of an elaborate garden to flash his “credentials” as a member of the elites in one single image. Romantic artists such as Caspar David Friedrich resisted Rubens identification. In The Garden Terrace (above, from 1811-1812), Friedrich shows a seemingly simple image of a young woman reading in the garden. However, Büttner deconstructs this painting to show how Friedrich disdains the young woman reading and ignoring the natural beauty around her, preferring instead the sublime wilderness beyond. “Perceived as the symbol of rationalism, the French garden is here contrasted with religious faith, a specifically German virtue,” Büttner explains. Suddenly, a garden scene not only depicts a philosophical distinction but also a nationalistic one, concisely capturing the convoluted web of ideas that underlie much of the garden imagery of the early nineteenth century before the Impressionists.

When the Impressionists and post-Impressionists arrive on the scene, Büttner’s narrative picks up speed and falls in line with the standard story of modern art. “The pure artistry in Monet’s pictures and those of the Impressionists developed a dynamic of its own,” Büttner writes, “one that caused objectivity to retreat into the background in favor of a total focus on artistic subjectivity.” Van Gogh takes this a step further and, in Büttner’s eyes, helps originate “the notion, commonly held to this day, that the artist as a creative subject, working for himself without commissions, adds new images to the reality of his time that must be engaged.” Later, German Expressionists such as Emil Nolde engage artistically with Van Gogh’s work in paintings such as Nolde’s Trolhoi’s Garden (above, from 1907). Büttner’s text helps restore the centrality of the garden and nature itself in the evolution of modern art—specifically as the origin of the vibrant colors that inspired the Impressionists and every movement on down to the Abstract Expressionists. Taking examples from artists not normally associated with garden scenes, such as Gustav Klimt and Edvard Munch, Büttner proves that the garden motif belonged not just to nature lovers but also to anyone addressing the course of modern art.

Paul Klee believed that the artist must hold “conversations with nature.” Klee’s Rose Garden (above, from 1920) is just one example of the many wonderful individual conversations within the larger dialogue of Western art with the idea of the garden found in Nils Büttner’s The History of Gardens in Painting. The garden may seem absent from the world of contemporary art, but Büttner believes that “[t]he garden painting fell into disrepute only when it degenerated into kitsch,” citing Bob Ross’ “happy little trees” and Thomas Kinkade’s sappy cottage gardens. Today’s focus on ecology will help reenergize the garden as a fruitful site of artistic exploration. If I have one complaint with Büttner’s text it is his laser-like focus on Western art to the exclusion of other traditions. A complete world history would be a tall order, but some inclusion of the garden in Chinese history (Craig Clunas’ Fruitful Sites: Garden Culture in Ming Dynasty China would be a great source) or the influence of Japanese garden painting on the West via Japonisme, a huge factor in the development of Van Gogh and others, would certainly add another dimension to Büttner’s argument. However, The History of Gardens in Painting remains a valuable compendium of how artists have lost themselves in gardens over time in the never-ending pursuit of paradise.

[Many thanks to Abbeville Press for providing me with a review copy of Nils Büttner’s The History of Gardens in Painting and for the images from the book shown above.]